not poffibly conceive what was meant by my ending a character with my making him fay at a great county meeting, on being asked for his bumper, popular and party toaft, "Sir, if you pleafe, I'll give you honest Mr. "Minucius:" the character or portrait is meant for a little fbozzo; a nothing; with a few strokes of the pencil just run through it, and not worth while to go about explaining: if any one reads the little playful or fatyrical touch, he will judge; and it is not every one that must have written down for him what is alluded to as well as faid. I will just say this, however, that now parties and manners too are not quite the fame as then. Let us finish our feaft of fine fupper, and eke " of reafon and flow of foul;"—and every body will not, I hope, fay I lye, when I do fay, I went home in my chair laughing all the way, which, upon my faith and word, I literally did: "Full ten years flander'd, did he once reply? POPE. You were then flandered, Mr. Pope, were you? Well, you took your revenge, however, at last: and revenge, they fay, is fweet. Now, I (if we may compare fmall things with great) was not flandered, but only smoked; and as they fay all geniufes must pay the tax of attack, so perhaps the proportion may have been kept up in the weight and levity of the tax, to the greatness and fmallness of the genius; and befides, may it not be faid, "Que "diable avoije afaire dans cette galere?" Perhaps then we have pretty well kept to our proportions; you, then, who was flandered, have taken that fweet thing Revenge;-I, who was only fmoked, have prayed only for the retort, nay, retort courteous only; which, if I have happened to have had given me, as I will hope at least I have, entirely satisfies me. Then too there were fuch a number, more than three thousand funs, that went down on my smoke, as I am really ashamed, or, if you will, hy, to name; but it will will be doubtlefs named for me, and on the whole, I fhall haply not be thought to have been very unconscionable, nay, by my even honourable and merry smokers themselves; to whom I now wish to offer my most amical respects. But for the anecdote of the quondam day, (fome people like thefe fort of anecdotes) I will venture to offer a few more particulars. Hitherto I have only talked of the merriment and laughter of my critical friends; and what fo pleasant a thing in this world as to laugh? They then furely who neglect not the occafion for it, are the best philofophers; between Democritus and Heraclitus, who can have a doubt? Nay, have I not myfelf lately granted, that we are "the only animals gifted with the faculty," if it be added, "to be laughed at too," it still leaves us our privilege just the fame. But let me follow up my anecdotic hiftory, by doing the justice to these my critical friends, of allowing, that if they laughed, they did not laugh only; no, true critics must reason too in proper time and place; and let me not be fo unfair as not to lay before my present or future readers (if I should have any) the critical reasonings of our long paffed day. What were they? (and pray you gentlemen who tire, let my friends, who do not, read my Hiftory of Man.) Why, firft, this axiom or datum was laid down, viz. That it was an impoffibility that be fhould have written a book-every thing proved it-it was demonftration; for did any one ever hear of a man's writing a book, who had never read one? Nay, who had paffed his life in every thing that was even the antipodes to all ftudy? That this book, totally void of all science, wanted not fudy but only thought, we will not at all infift upon in interruption of the flow of thofe gentlemen's reasonings. This first principle was laid down, and to be fure a true one; and is not this the fenfible proceeding of all reafoners? Fix your principle, then draw your conclufions; and this was regularly done. He could not, and therefore he he felf-evidently did not, write this book. Yet there was a book, and fomebody must have written it. The next regular ftep then of reafoning was,Who wrote it? why a certain Lady; more especially as there was poetry; now with him no poetry had ever appeared, confequently could not, yet too, per contra, here was Latin; but did ever any great man let one fmall bar ftand in the way of a philofophical difquifition?* *And after all, why expect reafon, confiftency, difcernment, and fo forth, from pleasure, illiterateness, and thoughtlessness, when from men called deep philofophers you have it not fee what follows, and then tell me farther as to my own eccentric wild diftinctions on instinct and reason, &c. I think we have had three philofophers on the deluge; Whifton, who drowned the world by the tail of a comet; there was no way to get the water off afterwards; no matter. Burnet made the world all flat, and fuppofed it a thin furface of earth, which was only a fuperficies or covering to a globe of water. Where the feas or rivers then were I do not recolle&t; I might find the book to tell me to-morrow, and fo appear more learned; but the reader may do fo, and what I relate is fufficient for us. The middle part then was fo burnt up by the fun, it was uninhabitable, as alfo fo parched and fo thin confequently, (from the fun being alfo then directly over it) that at laft it broke to pieces; and as the crush was confiderable, and the pieces or fragments rather large, it must be difficult to keep the ark (a thing fo neceflary for us all) from shipwreck; this he confeffes, and demands one poftulatum, and it would be hard to lose so much ingenuity for the want of only one; it was to afford him a pair of angels, which he supposes too reasonable to be refused him, and fo claps on a pair, and gives them to you in a little cut before his book; I wonder whether the angels were to keep it fteady, or to dance about with it, with pieces of earth as big as France or Ruffia, or perhaps Europe, flying about their ears; if not, furely poor Noah and his companions must have been terribly fea-fick. You fee, however, that hill and vale naturally followed all this. You think this man must have been a deist or an infidel? Not at all; he profeffes himself a believer in the scriptures, and honours Mofes as much as you; and to prove his religion, he gives you several texts of scripture, allufive to his system; and fo enough for Dr. Burnet, of the Charter-house. The third systemizer was Woodward, but I really have forgot all about his fyftem, except that it was just as wife as the others. A fourth, one is loath to name, for he was seriously a great and respectable man; he may, however, fomewhat support my own little fyftem, by fhewing how compatible greatness is with the fort of understanding my Maxim mentions, that may exist without the requifition of union of the two ingredients of cause and effect. And what did he? why, suppose (first) also, that the earth was flat, but originally covered with water; and then, that tides, currents, and other causes of motion, stirred the earth under, so as by degrees to give inequalities; then breakings of earth, and then confequently raife the earth, and proportionably fink the waters, fo as by degrees to produce islands, and at last the Alps and the Pyrennees, and even the Cordellieres. Whether the time from the Antidiluvians may not be rather fhort for this, or much more properly, where the Antidiluvians were when no land for them, M. Buffon and Moses must settle together, but the great proof of this fyftem, is the layers of earth (des couches) that you find every where, and that I myself indeed have often seen, on looking after them at the time, both at home and abroad, and which could be produced only by water; but I am afraid that thefe couches are not found every where; as the fir And now let me for a moment lay afide this my own attempted jocularity, and seriously ask fome of thofe other fort of gentlemen I fincerely hope to be firft (you will, perhaps, fay, deftru&tive) gate in the way: though if they were, what do you think of these diminutive parcels of earth forming the Cordellieres, ftill amazingly higher than either the Alps or Pyrennees. And what could have produced that phænomenon indeed! of marine things, not only on the tops of the highest hills every where, but God knows how deep in the earth, nay, stuck in quarries of stone and even marble beneath thofe fummits;-a strange jumble of the elements at some time or other they indeed prove! A most puzzling-striking phenomenon furely; it is one I have thought on with astonishment a hundred times. But no matter for any other objection, fince it is demonftrated there could not poffibly be water, any how, at all fufficient to ferve his purpose. Where his men were to come from after, he does not inform us; perhaps fomehow from fome part of a fish, fince in his natural history we are told that a hair drawn from the tail of a mare at horse, will produce a living animal; but pray stop, gentlemen, however, if any of you laugh, for diftinguons; and let us continue philofophers; this I by no means say I do not believe, on the contrary do believe it, or next to believe it, for this must come from fact, and it is the most incredible to me to suppose Buffon could invent one; and what matters what any fact be, so there is one? Talliamid indeed, from whom he took his system of the waters, tells us we were, during their reign, fish, and became men and women afterwards. But there is another circumftance of reality relating to the former fituations of our planet, that has also awakened my reflection a good deal, and I have thought sometimes might have fome connection with the above; it is the demonstration we now have of even a vaft number of volcanos where there are no apparent traces of them; that is, apparent to common eyes, though to learned ones in thofe matters quite the reverse. Condamine tells us, that there is lava almost everywhere; that here in England we have it almost all over the island, &c. Now lava, it is well known, is volcanic emiffion, and that only; confequently there were once volcanos in all thofe places. What then! if I have faid, was the world ever on fire, as well as under water? And was my chimerical philofopher (was it Thales? I forget) right at last about his original fire? It has fometimes occurred to me to afk myself, Does the old ftory of Phaeton allude from tradition to any thing of the fort? But I have answered myself, this is idle; yet they have their Deucalion for a deluge, and all nations have a tradition about one; fome, however, I believe, of a partial or partial ones. As to volcanos extinct we know of numbers; St. Helen's, I think, is entirely one. Otaheite, I believe, is another, with their caps atop, &c. How, by the way, the exifting volcanos ftill find supply, has often feemed odd to me; what an amazing quantity of terreftrial fubftance, for inftance, has tna flung up fince known history! The Monk there, who is to calculate the number and dates of the eruptions by the layers one over another, has trembled, (I should have thought more) we read, for his mofaical given period. But are not these miracles of fish, fhells, &c. juft mentioned in the quarries of rock and marble, to be folved in fome fhape or other, then, by a combination of earthquakes and volcanos at fome former period, in a number and degree we now have no notion of? But To follow up, I hope, my rule of rationality, I confefs my difficulty in crediting Buffon, where he tells us all the forts of dogs now known came originally from the Shepherd's cur. Let others reafon on this; and here furely Buffon had only furmife, and no fad or proof to stand upon. be read by, even though difapproved by them; (oh! what a relief to my poor mind, that dabler after dabler, now meets not with a kindred spirit in things the least in the world out of the paltry common place of things;) yes, fuch perfons I would ask, what resemblance there was in the two poetries that had appeared before the world; nay, I will venture to fay, that to fuch judges, the first poetry instead of affording the furmife of the latter one coming from the fame quarter manifeftly proved it did not; for though poetry, it was directly oppofite to the other. The firft was entirely female, But fince I am got fo far into my account of our species, or, I should fay, my Hiftory of Man again, and all confined to the moderns, let me give a word to the ancients too, though still not omit a word more, I had almost overlooked, and ftill, alas! of the great Buffon; it is this, viz. That in his fyftem of our earth, (he has given alfo) he fuppofes that it is a piece of the fun knocked off by a comet, which broke a quantity from it, fufficient to form us and all the planets, who took their places in the heavens naturally and regularly from the law of gravitation. La pauvre humanite! As to the ancients, what have they told us; they who have told us enough to give them honour for it, for these two or three thoufand years? Why, one, that the world came from fire; another, from water; what are their names? for I forget, among your Zenos, Crifippus, Thales, Pythagoras, and the reft of them. Plato, with his numerous fraternity, we have had over, with their chain, &c.; but without going on more Bedlatism, is it not a melancholy truth, for the honour of us all, that in the whole number, ancient and modern, two only have talked any thing but vifion and nonfence, and they two (oh! on the contrary, how much to our particular honour of Great-Britain) Englishmen, Newton and Locke; they have given you, what can only be attended to for a moment, fact and proof for every affertion. How unaccountable, that men (and they called rational beings too) should fit down to give you as fact, what at beft can only be guess; and how ftill more unaccountable, that other men (called rational too) fhould, on the authority alone, both adopt and give them honour for it for two or three thousand years together! I wonder whether any of Pythagoras's fectaries, after the knowledge they had got from him of fouls fo continually moving about on the furface of the earth from one creature to another, had ever the curiosity to look if they could not fee fome of them in their paffage: the philofophic and elegant Queen of Navarre had not the fatisfaction of doing it in her attempt, when she was obferved to look with such an uncommon attention at one of her dying maids of honour, as surprised her attendant courtiers; to whom the answered, on their afking the caufe, that she had watched the very latest moment, to see if she could difcern any fubftance pass from the breath at that very inftant. I am forry indeed she wanted any fuch proof. |