In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year, this supernatural personage appeared to mortals and conversed with them; the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περι την ερυθραν θαλασσαν εύρον, ανθρωποις Θα τον έτος άπαξ εντυγχάνοντα, ταλλα δε συν ταις νύμφαις, ο μαζί και δαίμοσι, ὡς έφασκε. He spoke in a tone not fur moved from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a frizrice filled the place: φθεγγομένου δε τον τόπον ευωδια κατεχε, του στοματος ήδιστον αποπνέοντος. From him Clechicas learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. * The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, gned that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the pem of Heinsius, “In harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum andre sibi visus est Dousa." Page 501. A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY. "Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met The venerable man ;' a healthy bloom Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear, To him, who traced upon his typic lyre of the deluge, and transmit the secrets of antediluvian knowledge to his posterity. See the extracts made by Bayle, in his article, Cham. The identity of Cham and Zoroaster depends upon the authority of Berosus, (or rather the impostor Annius,) and a few more such respectable testimonies. See Naudé's Apologie pour les Grands Hommes, &c., chap. viii., where he takes more trouble than is necessary in refuting this gratuitous supposition. Chamum à posteris hujus artis admiratoribus Zoroastrum, sen vivum astrum, propterea fuisse dictum et pro Deo habitum.-Bochart. Geograph. Sacr. lib. iv. cap. 1. Orpheus.-Paulinus, in his Hebdomades, cap. 2, lib. iii., has endeavored to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, or octave, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a diapente, which is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient philosophers illustrated their sublime theories, must have tended very much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with associations of the grandest and most interesting nature. See a preceding note, for their ideas upon the harmony of the spheres. Heraclitus compared the mixture of good and evil in this world to the blended varieties of harmony in a musical instrument, (Plutarch. de Animæ Procreat. ;) and Euryphamus, the Pythagorean, in a fragment preserved by Stobaus, describes human life, in its perfection, as a sweet and well-tuned lyre. Some of the ancients were so fanciful as to suppose that the Told to the young and bright-hair'd visitant Of Carmel's sacred mount.'-Then, in a flow Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on operations of the memory were regulated by a kind of musical cadence, and that ideas occurred to it "per arsin et thesin," while others converted the whole man into a mere harmonized machine, whose motion depended upon a certain tension of the body, analogous to that of the strings in an instrument. Cicero indeed ridicules Aristoxenus for this fancy, and says, "Let him teach singing, and leave philosophy to Aristotle ;" but Aristotle himself, though decidedly opposed to the harmonic speculations of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, could sometimes condescend to enliven his doctrines by reference to the beauties of musical science; as, in the treatise Περι κοσμου attributed to him, Καθαπερ δε εν χορώ, κορυφαίου κατάρξαντος, κ. τ. λ. The Abbé Batteux, in his inquiry into the crine of the Stoics, attributes to those philosophers the same mode of illustration. "L'âme étoit cause active TOLELY atTtos; le corps cause passive de rov waoxɛiv :—l'une agissant dans l'autre ; et y prenant, par son action même, un caractère, des formes, des modifications, qu'elle n'avoit pas par elle-même ; à peu près comme l'air, qui, chassé dans un instrument de musique, fait connoître, par les différens sons qu'il produit, les différentes modifications qu'il y reçoit." See a fine simile founded upon this notion in Cardinal Polignac's poem, lib. 5, v. 734. 1 Pythagoras is represented in Iamblichus as descending with great solemnity from Mount Carmel, for which reason the Carmelites have claimed him as one of their fraternity. This Mochus or Moschus, with the descendants of whom Pythagoras conversed in Phoenicia, and from whom he derived the doctrines of atomic philosophy, is supposed by some to be the same with Moses. Huett has adopted this idea, Démonstration Evangélique, Prop. iv. chap. 2, § 7; and Le Clerc, among others, has refuted it. See Biblioth. Choisie, tom. i. p. 75. It is certain, however, that the doctrine of atoms was known and promulgated long before Epicurus. "With the fountains of Democritus," says Cicero," the gardens of Epicurus were watered ;" and the learned author of the Intellectual System has shown, that all the early philosophers, till the time of Plato, were atomists. We find Epicurus, however, boasting that his tenets were new and unborrowed, and perhaps few among the ancients had any stronger claim to originality. In truth, if we examine their schools of philosophy, notwithstanding the peculiarities which seem to distinguish them from each other, we may generally observe that the difference is but verbal and trifling; and that, among those various and learned heresies, there is scarcely one to be selected, whose opinions are its own, original and exclusive. The doctrine of the world's eternity may be traced through all the sects. The continual metempsychosis of Pythagoras, the grand periodic year of the Stoics, (at the conclusion of which the universe is supposed to return to its original order, and commence a new revolution,) the successive dissolution and combination of atoms maintained by the Epicureans-all these tenets are but different imitations of the same general belief in the eternity of the world. As explained by St. Austin, the periodic year of the Stoics disagrees only so far with the idea of the Pythagoreans, that instead of an endless transmission of the soul through a variety of bodies, it restores the same body and soul to repeat their former round of existence, so that the "identical Plato, who lectured in the Academy of Athens, shall again and again, at certain intervals, during the lapse of eternity, appear in the same Academy and resume the same functions:"sic eadem tempora temporaliumque rerum volumina repeti, ut v. g. sicut in isto sæculo Plato philosophus in urbe Athe Through many a maze of Garden and of Through many a system, where the scatte Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam niensi, in eâ scholâ quæ Academia dicta est docuit, ita per innumerabilia retro sæcula, mul quidem intervallis, sed certis, et idem Plato, et tas, eademque schola, iidemque discipuli rep innumerabilia deinde sæcula repetendi sint.Dei, lib. xii. cap. 13. Vanini, in his dialogues, h a similar explication of the periodic revolutions o "Eà de causâ, qui nunc sunt in us? ritus, cer fuerunt, totiesque renascentur quoties ciderunt The paradoxical notions of the Stoics upon the riches, the dominion of their imaginary sage the most distinguishing characteristics of their according to their advocate Lipsius, were pecu sect. "Priora illa (decreta) quæ passim in philo scholis ferè obtinent, ista quæ peculiaria huic bent contradictionem: i. e. paradoxa.”—Manudi Philos. lib. iii. dissertat. 2. But it is evident (a Garnier has remarked, Mémoires de l'Acad. tom. even these absurdities of the Stoics are borrowe Plato is the source of all their extravagant para find their dogma, "dives qui sapiens," (which Alexandria has transferred from the Philosop Christian, Pædagog. lib. iii. cap. 6,) expressed in t Socrates at the end of the Phædrus. A άλλοι όσοι τηδε θεοι, δοίητε μοι καλώ γενεσθ ταξωθεν δε όσα εχω, τοις εντος είναι μοι φιλια vouicot Toy copov. And many other instan adduced from the Αντερασται, the Πολιτικός, ο that these weeds of paradox were all gathere bowers of the Academy. Hence it is that C preface to his Paradoxes, calls them Socratica; exulting in the patronage of Socrates, says, noster." This is indeed a coalition, which evin as can be wished the confused similitude of ar sophical opinions: the father of skepticism is t among the founders of the Portico; he, whose edge was that of his own ignorance, is called in the pretensions of the most obstinate dogmati tiquity. Rutilius, in his Itinerarium, has ridiculed th the Jews, as "lassati mollis imago Dei ;" but E an eternal holiday to his gods, and, rather that slumbers of Olympus, denied at once the inte Providence. He does not, however, seem to h gular in this opinion. Theophilus of Antioch, i any credit, imputes a similar belief to Pytha (Πυθαγόρας) τε των παντων θεους ανθρώπων μ Cev. And Plutarch, though so hostile to the Epicurus, has unaccountably adopted the very logical error. Thus, after quoting the opinion ras and Plato upon divinity, he adds, Koires νουσιν αμφοτεροι, ότι τον Θεον εποίησαν επ Twν avoрwπivov.-De Placit. Philosoph. lib. i. c himself has attributed a degree of indifference which is not far removed from the apathy heaven; as thus, in his Philebus, where Prot Ουκούν εικός γε ούτε χαίρειν θεούς, ούτε το ει Socrates answers, Пavv μev ovv εɩKOS, BOXTROV ikarɛpov ytyvоpevov εctiv;-while Aristotle su more absurd neutrality, and concludes, by no v analogy, that the deity is as incapable of virt Και γαρ ώσπερ ουδεν θηριου εστι κακία, ουδ ovde Scov.-Ethic. Nicomach. lib. vii. cap. 1. I totle, upon the subject of Providence, was little than Epicurus. He supposed the moon to be From the pure sun, which, though refracted all The lone, eternal One, who dwells above, And bright through every change!—he spoke of Him, From that high fount of spirit, through the grades divine interference, excluding, of course, this sublunary world from its influence. The first definition of the world, in his treatise Περι Κοσμου, (if this treatise be really the work of Aristotle,) agrees, almost verbum verbo, with that in the letter of Epicurus to Pythocles; and both omit the mention of a deity. In his Ethics, too, he intimates a doubt whether the gods feel any interest in the concerns of mankind.Ει γαρ τις επιμέλεια των ανθρωπίνων ύπο θεων γινεTa. It is true, he adds warep doket, but even this is very skeptical. In these erroneous conceptions of Aristotle, we trace the cause of that general neglect which his philosophy experienced among the early Christians. Plato is seldom much more orthodox, but the obscure enthusiasm of his style allowed them to accommodate all his fancies to their own purpose. Such glowing steel was easily moulded, and Platonism became a sword in the hands of the fathers. The Providence of the Stoics, so vaunted in their school, was a power as contemptibly inefficient as the rest. All was fate in the system of the Portico. The chains of destiny were thrown over Jupiter himself, and their deity was like the Borgia of the Epigrammatist, “et Cæsar et nihil." Not even the language of Seneca can reconcile this degradation of divinity "Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur; semper paret, semel jussit"-Lib. de Providentiâ, cap. 5. Academician; and we trace through his poetry the tenets of almost all the leading sects. The same kind of eclectic indifference is observable in most of the Roman writers. Thus Propertius, in the fine elegy to Cynthia, on his departure for Athens, Illic vel studiis animum emendare Platonis, Lib. iii. Eleg. 21. Though Broeckhusius here reads, "dux Epicure," which seems to fix the poet under the banners of Epicurus. Even the Stoic Seneca, whose doctrines have been considered so orthodox that St. Jerome has ranked him among the ecclesiastical writers, while Boccaccio doubts (in consideration of his supposed correspondence with St. Paul) whether Dante should have placed him in limbo with the rest of the Pagans-even the rigid Seneca has bestowed such commendations on Epicurus, that if only those passages of his works were preserved to us, we could not hesitate, I think, in pronouncing him a confirmed Epicurean. With smilar inconsistency, we find Porphyry, in his work upon abstinence, referring to Epicurus as an example of the most strict Pythagorean temperance; and Lancelotti (the author of "Farfalloni degli antici Istorici") has been seduced by this grave reputation of Epicurus into the absurd error of associating him with Chrysippus, as a chief of the Stoic school. There is no doubt, indeed, that however the Epicurean sect might have relaxed from its original purity, the morals of its founder were as correct as those of any among the ancient philosophers; and his doctrines upon pleasure, as explained in the letter to Menaceus, are rational, amiable, and consistent with our nature. A late writer, De Sablons, in his Grands Hommes vengés, expresses strong indignation against the Encyclopédistes for their just and animated praises of Epicurus, and discussing the question, "si ce philosophe étoit vertueux," denies it upon no other authority than the calumnies collected by Plutarch, who himself confesses that, on this particular subject, he consulted only opinion and report, without pausing to investigate their truth.Αλλα την δόξαν, ου την αληθειαν σκοπούμεν. Το the factions zeal of his illiberal rivals, the Stoics, Epicurus chiefly owed these gross misrepresentations of the life and opinions of himself and his associates, which, notwithstanding the learned exertions of Gassendi, have still left an odium on the name of his philosophy; and we ought to examine the ancient accounts of this philosopher with about the same degree of cautious belief which, in reading ecclesiastical With respect to the difference between the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Academicians, the following words of Cicero prove that he saw but little to distinguish them from each other: Peripateticos et Academicos, nominibus differentes, re congruentes; a quibus Stoici ipsi verbis magis quam sentenuis dissenserunt."--Academic. lib. ii. 5; and perhaps what Reid has remarked upon one of their points of controversy might be applied as effectually to the reconcilement of all the rest. "The dispute between the Stoics and Peripatees was probably all for want of definition. The one said they were good under the control of reason, the other that they should be eradicated."-Essays, vol. iii. In short, it appears a no less difficult matter to establish the boundaries of opinion between any two of the Philosophical sects, than It would be to fix the landmarks of those estates in the moon, which Ricciolus so generously allotted to his brother astronomers. Accordingly we observe some of the greatest men of antiquity passing without scruple from school to school, according to the fancy or convenience of the momeat. Cicero, the father of Roman philosophy, is someLes an Academician, sometimes a Stoic; and, more than asce, he acknowledges a conformity with Epicurus; "non ne cansa igitur Epicurus ausus est dicere semper in pluri-history, we yield to the invectives of the fathers against the bas bonis esse sapientem, quia semper sit in voluptatibus."- heretics,-trusting as little to Plutarch upon a dogma of Tusculan. Quæst. lib. v. Though often pure in his theoloJ. Cicero sometimes smiles at futurity as a fiction; thus, In his Oration for Cluentius, speaking of punishments in the de to come, he says, "Quæ si falsa sunt, id quod omnes ingunt, quid el tandem aliud mors eripuit, præter sensum aris *—though here we should, perhaps, do him but Justice by agreeing with his commentator Sylvius, who remarks upon this passage, "Hæc autem dixit, ut causæ suæ Waterviret." The poet Horace roves like a butterfly through the schools, and now wings along the walls of the Porch, w basks among the flowers of the Garden; while Virgil, with a tone of mind strongly philosophical, has yet left us wly uncertain as to the sect which he espoused. The tance of opinion declares him to have been an Epicurean, at the ancient author of his life asserts that he was an Epicurus, as we would to the vehement St. Cyril upon a tenet of Nestorius. (1801.) The preceding remarks, I wish the reader to observe, were written at a time when I thought the studies to which they refer much more important as well as more amusing than, I freely confess, they appear to me at present. 1 Lactantius asserts that all the truths of Christianity may be found dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that any one who would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy might form a code in no respect differing from that of the Christian. "Si extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem sparsam per singulos per sectasque diffusam colligeret in unum, ac redigeret in corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a nobis."-Inst. lib. vi. c. 7. 3 Το μόνον και ερημον. Where are the chords she used to touch? Of feeling soon be lull'd to rest, ΤΟ LADY HEATHCOTE, ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WI "Tunnebridge est à la même distance de Lor Fontainebleau l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beat lant dans l'un et dans l'autre sexe s'y rassemb des eaux. La compagnie," &c. &c. See Mémoires de Grammont, Second Part Tunbridg WHEN Grammont graced these happy And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pant The merriest wight of all the kings That ever ruled these gay, gallant i Like us, by day, they rode, they walk At eve, they did as we may do, And Grammont just like Spencer talk And lovely Stewart smiled like you The only different trait is this, That woman then, if man beset he Was rather given to saying "yes," Because, as yet, she knew no bet Each night they held a coterie, Where, every fear to slumber char Lovers were all they ougat to be, And husbands not the least alarm' Then call'd they up their school-day Nor thought it much their sense be To play at riddles, quips, and cranks, And lords show'd wit, and ladies te As-"Why are husbands like the mi Because, forsooth, a husband's duty Is but to set the name and print That give a currency to beauty. "Why is a rose in nettles hid "Like a young widow, fresh and Because 'tis sighing to be rid Of weeds, that "have no business And thus they miss'd and thus they And now they struck and now the And some lay in of full grown wit, While others of a pun miscarried. collected together in the Galaxy.-Anpos de or Πυθαγοραν, αἱ ψυχαι ὡς συνάγεσθαι φησιν εις τα -Porphyr. de Antro Nymph. "Twas one of those facetious nights That Grammont gave this forfeit ring For breaking grave conundrum-rites, Or punning ill, or-some such thing: From whence it can be fairly traced, The snowy hand that wears it now. All this I'll prove, and then, to you, To dedicate the important chronicle. Let no pedantic fools be there; Forever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd. But still receive the young, the gay, The few who know the rare delight Of reading Grammont every day, And acting Grammont every night. THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS, A FRAGMENT. Τι κακον ὁ γελως; CHRYSOST. Homil. in Epist. ad Hebræos. * BUT, whither have these gentle ones, 1 Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father.-" Nullâ de re anquam præterquam de patre dubitavit."-In Vit. He was very learned-"Là-dedans, (that is, in his head when it was spened.) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque "Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence de Laun avec le Grec," &c.-See L'Histoire de Montmaur, 1. 11. p. 91. * Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus.-" Philippus Bombastus latet sub plendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi," says Stadelas de circumforanea Literatorum vanitate.-He used to fght the devil every night with a broadsword, to the no ' terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (Vide Oporin. Vit. apud Christian. Gryph. Vit. Belect, quorundam Eruditissimorum, &c.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen :-"My very beard (says he in Paragrenum) has more learning in it than either Galen TM Avicenna.” *The angel, who scolded St. Jerom for reading Cicero, as Gndian tells the story in his "Concordantia discordantium Led my truant brains a dancing? Off I fly, careering far In chase of Pollys, prettier far But to begin my subject rhyme- A cold and loveless son of Lucifer, (Which Dagon, whether He or She, Canonum," and says, that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classics: "Episcopus Gentilium libros non legat."-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying -besides, angels, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenus assures us, have got no tongues. Ovx'ús pv тα wrα, ouтws EXEL νοις ἡ γλώττα· ουδ' αν οργανα τις δωη φωνης αγγελοις. Clem. Alexand. Stromat. 4 The idea of the Rabbins, respecting the origin of woman, is not a little singular. They think that man was originally formed with a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off this appendage, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordinary supposition the following reflection is founded:-If such is the tie between women and men, The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf, For he takes to his tail like an idiot again, And thus makes a deplorable ape of himself. Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail, Every husband remembers th' original plan, And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail, Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can. |