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1 It does not appear to have been very difficult to become a philosopher amongst the ancients. A moderate store of learning, with a considerable portion of confidence, and just wit enough to produce an occasional apophthegm, seem to have been all the qualifications necessary for the purpose. The principles of moral science were so very imperfectly understood that the founder of a new sect, in forming his ethical code, might consult either fancy or temperament, and adapt it to his own passions and propensities; so that Mahomet, with a little more learning, might have flourished as a philosopher in those days, and would have required but the polish of the schools to become the rival of Aristippus in morality. In the science of nature, too, though some valuable truths were discovered by them, they seemed hardly to know they were truths, or at least were as well satisfied with errors; and Xenophanes, who asserted that the stars were igneous clouds, lighted up every night and extinguished again in the morning, was thought and styled a philosopher, as generally

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And often, as she smiling said,

In fancy's hour, thy gentle rays Shall guide my visionary tread

Through poesy's enchanting maze. Thy flame shall light the page refin'd,

Where still we catch the Chian's breath, Where still the bard, though cold in death, Has left his soul unquench'd behind. Or, o'er thy humbler legend shine,

Oh man of Asera's dreary glades! 3
To whom the nightly warbling Nine 4
A wand of inspiration gave, 5
Pluck'd from the greenest tree, that shades
The crystal of Castalia's wave.

Then, turning to a purer lore,
We'll cull the sages' deep-hid store;
From Science steal her golden clue,
And every mystic path pursue,
Where Nature, far from vulgar eyes,
Through labyrinths of wonder flies.

as he who anticipated Newton in developing the arrangement of the universe.

For this opinion of Xenophanes, see Plutarch. de Placit. Philosoph. lib. ii. cap. 13. It is impossible to read this treatise of Plutarch, without alternately admiring the genius, and smiling at the absurdities of the philosophers.

2 The ancients had their lucernæ cubiculariæ or bedchamber lamps, which, as the emperor Galienus said, "nil cras meminere ;" and, with the same commendation of secrecy, Praxagora addresses her lamp in Aristophanes, Exxàng. We may judge how fanciful they were, in the use and embellishment of their lamps, from the famous symbolic Lucerna, which we find in the Romanum Museum Mich. Ang. Causei, p. 127.

3 Hesiod, who tells us in melancholy terms of his father's flight to the wretched village of Ascra. Egy. z Husg. v. 251. 4 Εννυχίαι στείχον, περικαλλία όσσαν ιισαι. Theog. v. 10. 5 Και μοι σκηπτρον ίδον, δάφνης κριθηλια οξον. Ιd. v.30.

'Tis thus my heart shall learn to know How fleeting is this world below, Where all that meets the morning light, Is chang'd before the fall of night!!

I'll tell thee, as I trim thy fire,

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Swift, swift the tide of being runs, "And Time, who bids thy flame expire, "Will also quench yon heaven of suns."

Oh, then if earth's united power
Can never chain one feathery hour;
If every print we leave to-day
To-morrow's wave will sweep away;
Who pauses to inquire of heaven
Why were the fleeting treasures given,
The sunny days, the shady nights,
And all their brief but dear delights,
Which heaven has made for man to use,
And man should think it crime to lose?
Who that has cull'd a fresh-blown rose
Will ask it why it breathes and glows,
Unmindful of the blushing ray,
In which it shines its soul away;
Unmindful of the scented sigh,
With which it dies and loves to die.

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1 'Puỷ và đàm ToTauw dizzy, as expressed among the dogmas of Heraclitus the Ephesian, and with the same image by Seneca, in whom we find a beautiful diffusion of the thought. "Nemo est mane, qui fuit pridie. Corpora nostra rapiuntur fluminum more; quidquid vides currit cum tempore. Nihil ex his quæ videmus manet. Ego ipse, dum loquor mutari ipsa, mutatus sum," &c.

* Aristippus considered motion as the principle of happiness, in which idea he differed from the Epicureans, who looked to a state of repose as the only true voluptuousness, and avoided even the too lively agitations of pleasure, as a violent and ungraceful derangement of the senses.

3 Maupertuis has been still more explicit than this philosopher, in ranking the pleasures of sense above the sublimest pursuits of wisdom. Speaking of the infant man, in his pro

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duction, he calls him, "une nouvelle créature, qui pourra comprendre les choses les plus sublimes, et ce qui est bien au-dessus, qui pourra goûter les mêmes plaisirs." See his Vénus Physique. This appears to be one of the efforts at Fontenelle's gallantry of manner, for which the learned President is so well and justly ridiculed in the Akakia of Voltaire.

Maupertuis may be thought to have borrowed from the ancient Aristippus that indiscriminate theory of pleasures which he has set forth in his Essai de Philosophie Morale, and for which he was so very justly condemned. Aristippus, accord. ing to Laertius, held μη διαφέρειν τε ήδονην ήδονης, which irrational sentiment has been adopted by Maupertuis: "Tant qu'on ne considère que l'état présent, tous les plaisirs sont du même genre," &c. &c.

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WRITTEN IN A COMMONPLACE BOOK,

CALLED

"THE BOOK OF FOLLIES;"

IN WHICH EVERY ONE THAT OPENED IT WAS TO CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING.

TO THE BOOK OF FOLLIES.

THIS tribute's from a wretched elf,
Who hails thee, emblem of himself.
The book of life, which I have trac'd,
Has been, like thee, a motley waste
Of follies scribbled o'er and o'er,
One folly bringing hundreds more.
Some have indeed been writ so neat,
In characters so fair, so sweet,
That those who judge not too severely,
Have said they lov'd such follies dearly:
Yet still, O book! the allusion stands ;
For these were penn'd by female hands:
The rest- alas! I own the truth
Have all been scribbled so uncouth
That Prudence, with a with'ring look,
Disdainful, flings away the book.
Like thine, its pages here and there
Have oft been stain'd with blots of care;
And sometimes hours of peace, I own,
Upon some fairer leaves have shown,
White as the snowings of that heav'n
By which those hours of peace were given.
But now no longer such, oh, such
The blast of Disappointment's touch!
No longer now those hours appear;
Each leaf is sullied by a tear :
Blank, blank is ev'ry page with care,
Not ev'n a folly brightens there.
Will they yet brighten? — never, never!
Then shut the book, O God, for ever!

TO ROSA.

LIKE one who trusts to summer skies.
And puts his little bark to sea,
Is he who, lur'd by smiling eyes,
Consigns his simple heart to thee.

For fickle is the summer wind,

And sadly may the bark be tost; For thou art sure to change thy mind, And then the wretched heart is lost!

TO ROSA.

SAY, why should the girl of my soul be in tears At a meeting of rapture like this,

When the glooms of the past and the sorrow of years

Have been paid by one moment of bliss ?

Are they shed for that moment of blissful delight, Which dwells on her memory yet?

Do they flow, like the dews of the love-breathing night,

From the warmth of the sun that has set ?

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But brazen notes of war, by thousand trumpets So innocent, love, is the joy we then sip,

sung.

So little of wrong is there in it,

But then came the light harp, when danger was That I wish all my errors were lodg'd on your lip, ended,

And Beauty once more lull'd the War-God to rest;

When tresses of gold with his laurels lay blended, And flights of young doves made his helmet their nest.

1 Εγχει, και πάλιν είπε, παλιν, παλιν, Ηλιοδώρας
Είπε, συν ακρητω το γλυκυ μισγ' όνομα.
Και με τον βρεχθεντα μύροις και χθιζον εοντα,
Μναμοσυνον κείνας, αμφιτίθει στέφανον

And I'd kiss them away in a minute.

Then come to your lover, oh! fly to his shed,

From a world which I know thou despisest; And slumber will hover as light o'er our bed As e'er on the couch of the wisest.

Δακρυσι φιλέραστον ίδου ῥόδον, ούνεκα κειναν
Αλλοθι κ' οι κόλποις ήμετέροις εσορα.

BRUNCK Analect. tom. i. p. 28.

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