fault is in myself that I do not feel more convinced of the truth of his system. I am told the second volume is much more satisfactory than the first. I find it is a fashionable book, from which one would infer that this is an age of most profound literature; and from the very nature of his subject it is scarcely possible to discover what he means but by the assistance of Greek and Hebrew.”* Voltaire. "I am not surprised at any blunder in Voltaire's arguments. Wit is a squint of the understanding, which is mighty apt to set things in a wrong place. I have not seen any of his writings, nor from the character of them do I ever design it. I should as soon think of playing with a toad or a viper, as of reading such blasphemy and impiety, as I am told are contained in some of his works.t Hume and Rousseau. 1766. "Have you heard of a strange quarrel between David Hume and J. J. Rousseau? Poor Rousseau to be sure was undone by the unmolested repose, to which he has been doomed in England; ‡ and it was * Vol. II. p. 272. + Ibid. p. 272. "Mrs. Carter seems to have formed a very just idea of Rousseau's character, though she always refused to read his, Voltaire's, or any other works of a similar tendency; which might, she said, do her hurt, and could do her no good. Perhaps it might be well, if other persons whose faith and practice were not established upon so firm a foundation as hers, Rousseau indeed has done much more had formed a similar resolution. harm to society than either Hume or Voltaire have done. They attacked Christianity, which, even without the very able defenders it has had, can very fit he should relieve himself by making some bustle, as nobody was charitable enough to disturb him. Hume is extremely angry, and wants to print the correspondence, but is advised to forbear. When they were together, he humoured Rousseau like a peevish child, to which certainly he had no right, unless he could have pleaded the understanding of a child in excuse for its humours. Natural infirmities of temper are to be treated with tenderness and compassion; but when people work up perverseness into a philosophical system, and contrive to make themselves as troublesome as they possibly can, they forfeit all claim to indulgence, and every encouragement to their unreasonable humours is an injury to society." Sterne. let "I thought the tone of one paragraph in your ter did not seem your own, even before you gave an intimation that it belonged to the Sentimental Traveller, whom I neither have read, nor probably ever shall; for indeed there is something shocking in whatever I have heard either of the author, or of his writings. It is the fashion, I find, to extol him for his benevolence, a word so wretchedly mis defend itself; but Rousseau endeavoured to destroy the boundary between good and evil, vice and virtue; and by allowing the freest scope to the passions, without the imputation of any guilt to the indulgence of them, he has confounded the right and wrong of moral actions, and done incalculable mischief." Pennington. * Vol. II. p. 146. applied, and so often put as a substitute for virtue, that one is quite sick of hearing it repeated either by those who have no ideas at all, or by those who have none but such as confound all differences of right and wrong. Merely to be struck by a sudden impulse of compassion at the view of an object of distress, is no more benevolence than it is a fit of the gout, and indeed has a nearer relation to the last than to the first. Real benevolence would never suffer a husband and a father to neglect and injure those whom the ties of nature, the order of providence, and the general sense of mankind have entitled to his first regards. Yet this unhappy man by his carelessness and extravagance has left a wife and child to starve, or to subsist on the precarious bounty of others. Nor would real benevolence lead a clergyman to ramble about the world after objects with whom he has no particular connection, when he might exercise the noblest duties of a benevolent heart in a regular discharge of his proper function, instead of neglecting and disgracing it by indecent and buffoon writings.+" * "Sterne had died in the beginning of this year 1768. It were to be wished that these observations of Mrs. Carter were bound up with every edition of his works as a proper antidote to their poison. Few writers have done so much mischief to the world: for by setting up feeling in opposition to principle, and casual benevolence as an excuse for the neglect or the breach of positive duty, he has done more towards confounding the limits of right and wrong, than perhaps any other author except Rousseau. His descriptions of the power and the effects of benevolence are beautiful; but a more ancient writer has described it at least as well. See St. Paul's first Epist. to the Corinthians, chap. xiii." Pennington. Vol. II. p. 166. Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. 1766. "Be so good to tell Mrs. Handcock that I do like the Vicar of Wakefield; and likewise that I do not: by which means in any case I hope I am secure of being of her opinion. Indeed it has admirable things in it, though mixt with provoking absurdities;* at which one should not be provoked if the book in general had not great merit. A small alteration in the author's plan might have furnished I think a very useful lesson. The character of Burchell as it now stands is entirely out of nature, whether we suppose him to be guided by good principles or bad. If the author had strongly marked him as acting by no principles at all, every instance of his behaviour would have been natural: for every contradiction and every absurdity is natural to a humourist; and the satirizing a character of all others perhaps the most destructive to the peace of human society, would have been a very instructive performance."+ Swift. "I have never read Swift's last published Letters; but am glad to find that they help to justify me in always having had a more favourable idea of his character than most people seemed to think he deserved. There always appeared a rectitude and "Is not that also the exact character of its author?" Pennington. + Vol. II. p. 143. sincerity in him, much superior to the greater number of his cotemporary geniuses. His wit, I cannot help thinking, was mere distemper, and for many instances of shocking impropriety and levity into which it hurried him he was perhaps as little accountable as for the delirium of a fever. Lord Corke I think somewhere speaks of his deplorable ideotcy as a judgment: surely it would have been more charitable to have considered it as the last stage of a long madness, which very frequently terminates in this conclusion."* ART. DCCCLXX. Address to Time. INSCRIBED TO THE EDITOR OF CENSURA LITERARIA." OH! Time, thou shadow of enormous growth, The dust of desolation covers all! Time on his hasty pilgrimage hath mark'd *Vol. II. p. 38. |