so if you could prove nothing. Men, like dogs and cats, fawn upon you while you leave them on the ground; if you lift them up they bite and scratch; and if you show them their own features in the glass, they would fly at your throat and tear your eyes out. This between ourselves: for we must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain. Philosophers have taken this side of the question to show their ingenuity: but sound philosophers are not ingenious. If philosophy can render us no better and no happier, away with it! There are things that can; and let us take them. What dost thou sigh at, Isaac? Newton. At my ignorance, in some degree, of their writings. Barrow. At your ignorance of the ignorant? No man ever understood the things that are most admired in Plato and Aristoteles. In Plato there are incoherencies that fall to pieces at a touch: and Aristoteles lost himself in the involutions of his own web. What must we think of a philosopher, who promised to teach one pupil that which he withheld from the rest, although these were more familiar with him, and more instructed? And what must we think of a pupil, who was indignant that any others should partake in his sentiments and his knowledge? Yet such men have guided the scientific, such men have ruled the world. Newton. Not such was Bacon. Barrow. No indeed. I told you, and I repeat it, I think the small volume of Essays in your hand, contains more wisdom and more genius than we can find in all the philosophers of antiquity; with one exception, Cicero. On which I desired you to peruse it attentively, and to render me an account of it according to your opinion. Newton. Sir, I have been induced to believe, but rather from the authority of my elders than from my own investigation, that Bacon is the more profound of the two, although not the more eloquent. Barrow. If Bacon had written as easily and harmoniously as Cicero, he would have lost a portion of his weight with the generality of the learned, who are apt to conceive that in easy movement there is a want of solidity and strength. We must confess that antiquity has darkened colleges and has distorted criticism. Very wise men, and very wary and inquisitive, walk over the earth, and are ignorant not only what minerals lie beneath, but what herbs and foliage they are treading. Some time afterward, and probably some distant time, a specimen of ore is extracted and exhibited; then another; lastly the bearing and diameter of the vein are observed and measured. Thus it is with writers who are to have a currency through ages. In the beginning they are confounded with most others; soon they fall into some secondary class; next, into one rather less obscure and humble; by degrees they are liberated from the dross and lumber that hamper them; and, being once above the heads of contemporaries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly and erectly, then rapidly and majestically, till the vision strains and aches as it pursues them in their ethereal elevation. Neither you nor I have wasted our time in the cultivation of poetry; but each of us hath frequently heard it discoursed on by those who have; and, if it serves for nothing else, it serves for an illustration. In my early days he would have been scoffed out of countenance who should have compared the Lycidas, or the Allegro and Penseroso, of Mr. John Milton, to the sterling poetry (as it was called) of Dr. John Donne: and yet much may be said in favour of the younger: and there are those, and not only undergraduates, but bachelors and masters, who venture even to prefer him openly. Who knows but we may see him extolled to the level of Lucan and Statius, strong as is the sense of the University against all sorts of supplanters! There are eyes that can not see print when near them; there are men that can not see merit. Newton. The Latin secretary may be pardoned for many defects in his poetry, and even for many in his politics, in consideration of the reverence he bore toward the Apocalypse. I cannot think him a very irreligious man, although he does not attend divine service, we are told, so regularly as we could have wished. Barrow, Let us talk no more about him. I opposed his principles: nevertheless he may have acted conscientiously: and even his principles are now coming again into fashion, and among the sons of those very cavaliers who would have hanged him. Perhaps the most dangerous of his doctrines, the lawfulness of setting aside God's anointed for misconduct, may soon be the leading one in the front of our Constitution. Well! we are not met for politics: only it would be salutary to consider, if God's anointed will not be set aside, what must be done: how avoid the commission of a diabolical act. Newton. Could we rightly understand the Revelations, I question not but every difficulty of this nature would be solved. Barrow. May-be: let us trust in God. Newton. We must have certain data for everything upon which we reason: the greater part of reasoners begin without them. Barrow. I wish the event may answer your expectations; that the Apocalypse, the Argonautic Expedition, and the Siege of Troy, form the trident which is to push away our difficulties in navigating through all the rocks and shoals of time; all those of religion, and all those of history. Happen what may, I doubt nothing of your surpassing the foremost of your competitors; of your very soon obtaining a name in the University, little below Doctor Spry's of Caius, Doctor Brockhouse's of St. John's, Doctor Cockburn's of Emanuel, Doctor Turnbull's of Peter-house, or Doctor Cruikshank's of Bennet; nay, a name which, Newton. Here are reasons enough for me rather to apply my mind as you direct it, than to the examination of facts which never can be collected by one person; or to poetry, for which I have no call; or to the composition of essays, such as those of Montaigne and Bacon; or dialogues, such as those of Cicero and Plato, and, nearer our times, of Erasmus and Galileo. You had furnished me before with arguments in abundance; convincing me that, even if I could write as well as they did, the reward of my labours would be dilatory and posthumous. within a few years, may reach even to Leyden and | been, and let us hope there may be, judicious and Paris, as that of a most studious young man, dis- virtuous men, so inflamed by the glory of their tinguished alike for application and invention. country in their days, that, leaving all passions Newton. Although I could not in conscience and prejudices, they follow this sole guide, and disclaim the small merit there may be in applica- are crowned by universal consent for commemotion, since I owe it to the encouragement of my rating her recent exploits. tutor, I surely have no right or title to invention. Barrow. You have already given proofs of it beyond any man I know. Your questions lead to great discoveries: whether it please God that you hereafter make them, or some one following you, is yet uncertain. We are silly enough to believe that the quality of invention, as applied to literature, lies in poetry and romance, mostly or altogether. I dare to speculate on discoveries in the subjects of your studies, every one far greater, every one far more wonderful, than all that lie within the range of fiction. In our days the historian is the only inventor: and it is ludicrous to see how busily and lustily he beats about, with his string and muzzle upon him. I wish we could drag him for a moment into philosophical life: it would be still more amusing to look at him, as he runs over this loftier and dryer ground, throwing up his nose and whimpering at the prickles he must pass through. Few men are contented with what is strictly true concerning the occurrences of the world: it neither heats nor soothes. The body itself, when it is in perfect health, is averse to a state of rest. We wish our prejudices to be supported, our animosities to be increased, as those who are inflamed by liquor would add materials to the inflammation. Newton. The simple verities, important perhaps in their consequences, which I am exploring, not only abstract me from the daily business of society, but exempt me from the hatred and persecution to which every other kind of study is exposed. In poetry a good pastoral would raise against one as vehement enemies as a good satire. A great poet in our country, like the great giant in Sicily, can never move without shaking the whole island; while the mathematician and astronomer may pursue their occupations, and rarely be hissed or pelted from below. You spoke of historians: it would ill become a person of my small experience to discourse on them after you. Barrow. Let me hear, however, what you have to say, since at least it will be dispassionate. Newton. Those who now write history do certainly write it to gratify a party, and to obtain notoriety and money. The materials lie in the cabinet of the statesman, whose actions and their consequences are to be recorded. If you censure them, you are called ungrateful for the facilities he has afforded you; and if you commend them, venal. No man, both judicious and honest, will subject himself to either imputation. Barrow. Not only at the present day, but always, the indulgence of animosity, the love of gain, and the desire of favour, have been the inducements of an author to publish in his lifetime the history of his contemporaries. But there have Barrow. I should entertain a mean opinion of myself, if all men or the most-part praised and admired me: it would prove me to be somewhat like them. Sad and sorrowful is it to stand near enough to people for them to see us wholly; for them to come up to us and walk round us leisurely and idly, and pat us when they are tired and going off. That lesson which a dunce can learn at a glance, and likes mightily, must contain little, and not good. Unless it can be proved that the majority are not dunces, are not wilful, presumptuous, and precipitate, it is a folly to care for popularity. There are indeed those who must found their fortunes upon it; but not with books in their hands. After the first start, after a stand among the booths and gauds and prostitutes of party, how few have lived contentedly, or died calmly! One hath fallen the moment when he had reached the last step of the ladder, having undersawed it for him who went before, and forgotten that knavish act: another hath wasted away more slowly, in the fever of a life externally sedentary, internally distracted: a third, unable to fulfill the treason he had stipulated, and haunted by the terrors of detection, snaps the thread under the shears of the Fates, and makes even those who frequented him believe in Providence. Isaac! Isaac! the climbing plants are slender ones. Men of genius have sometimes been forced away from the service of society into the service of princes; but they have soon been driven out, or have retired. When shall we see again, in the administration of any country, so accomplished a creature as Wentworth,* the favourite of Charles! Only light men recover false steps: his greatness crushed him. Aptitude for serving princes is no proof or signification of genius, nor indeed of any elevated or extensive knowledge. The interests of many require a multiplicity of talents to comprehend and accomplish them. Mazarin and Richelieu were as little able as they were little *He far excelled in energy and capacity the other councillors of Charles; but there was scarcely a crueller or (with the exception of his master) a more perfidious man on either side. Added to which, he was wantonly oppressive, and sordidly avaricious. disposed to promote the well-being of the commu- | great, nor favoured by the popular. I have no time for visiting: I detest the strife of tongues: all noises discompose me. Barrow. We will then lay aside the supposition. The haven of philosophy itself is not free at all seasons from its gusts and swells. Let me admonish you to confide your secrets to few: I mean the secrets of science. In every great mind there are some: every deep inquirer hath discovered more than he thought it prudent to avow, as almost every shallow one throws out more than he hath well discovered. Among our learned friends we may be fully and unreservedly philosophical: in the company of others we must remember, first and chiefly, that discretion is a part of philosophy; and we must let out only some glimpses of the remainder. Newton. Surely no harm can befall us from following a chain of demonstrations in geometry, or any branch of the mathematics. Barrow. Let us hope there may be none: nevertheless we can not but recollect how lately Galileo was persecuted and imprisoned for his discoveries. Newton. He lived under a popish government. nity; both of them had keen eyes, and kept them on one object, aggrandisement. We find the most trivial men in the streets pursuing an object through as many intricacies, and attaining it; and the schemes of children, though sooner dropped, are frequently as ingenious and judicious. No person can see more clearly than you do, the mortifications to which the ambitious are subject: but some may fall into the snares of ambition whose nature was ever averse to it, and whose wisdom would almost reach anything, and only seems too lofty to serve them watchfully as a guard. It may thus happen to such as have been accustomed to study and retirement, and fall unexpectedly on the political world by means of recommendations. There are those, I doubt not, who would gladly raise their name and authority in the state, by pushing you forward, as the phrase is, into parliament. They seize any young man who has gained some credit at college, no matter for what, whether for writing an epigram or construing a passage in Lycophron; and, if he succeeds to power, they and their family divide the patronage. The ambitious heart is liable to burst in the emptiness of its elevation: let yours, which is sounder, lie lower and quieter. Think how much greater is the glory you may acquire by opening new paths to science, than by widening old ones to corruption. I would not whisper a syllable in the ear of Faction: but the words of the intelligent, in certain times and on certain occasions, do not vary with parties and systems. The royalist and republican meet; the difference lies merely in the intent, the direction, and the application. Do not leave the wise for the unwise, the lofty for the low, the retirement of a college for the turbulence of a House of Commons. Rise, but let no man lift you leave that to the little and to the weak. Think within Newton. That is rational in England which yourself, I will not say how impure are the sources beyond the Alps is monstrous. By God's blessing, of election to our Parliament, but how inconsider- I firmly believe in the Holy Scriptures; yet, under able a distinction is conferred on the representa- your discretion and guidance, I would be informed tive, even where it is not an individual who | if the sun's rays in Syria could ever be above the nominates, or only a few who appoint him, but where several hundreds are the voters. For who are they, and who direct them? The roughest bear-guard, the most ferocious bull-baiter, the most impudent lawyer, the tinker that sings loudest, and the parson that sits latest at the alehouse, hitting them all by turns with his tobaccopipe, calling them all sad dogs, and swearing till he falls asleep he will hear no more filthy toasts. Show me the borough where such people as these are not the most efficient in returning a candidate to parliament; and then tell me which of them is fit to be the associate.. it would be too ludicrous to say the patron. of a Euclid or an Archimedes? My dear Newton! the best thing is to stand above the world; the next is, to stand apart from it on any side. You may attain the first in trying to attain it, you are certain of the second. Newton. I am not likely to be noticed by the Barrow. My friend! my friend! all the most eminently scientific, all the most eminently brave and daring in the exercise of their intellects, live, and have ever lived, under a popish government. There are popes in all creeds, in all countries, in all ages. Political power is jealous of intellectual; often lest it expose and mar its plans and projects, and oftener lest it attract an equal share of celebrity and distinction. Whenever the literary man is protected by the political, the incitement to it is the pride of patronage, not the advancement of letters, nor the honour they confer on the cultivator or the country. horizon for twenty-four hours, without a material alteration, without an utter derangement, of our whole mundane system.* Barrow. Reserve that question for a future time and a wiser teacher. At present I would only remark to you, that our mundane system has been materially altered; and that its alterations may have been attributed to other causes than the true, and laid down by different nations as having taken place at different epochs and on *Newton was timid and reserved in expressing his opinions, and was more orthodox (in the Anglican sense of orthodoxy) early in life than later. What he thought at last is not clear; and perhaps it was well for him that it was no clearer. Under his eyes, in the reign of William III., a youth of eighteen was punished with death for expressing such opinions as our philosopher hinted to Le Clerc. To remove and consume the gallows on which such men are liable to suffer, is among the principal aims and intents of these writings. different occasions, sometimes to gratify their pride, sometimes to conceal their ignorance. Newton. I am not quite satisfied. Barrow. Those who are quite satisfied, sit still and do nothing: those who are not quite satisfied, are the sole benefactors of the world. Newton. And are driven out of it for their pains. Barrow. Men seldom have loved their teachers. Newton. How happens it then that you are loved so generally? for who is there, capable of instruction, that you have not taught? Never, since I have been at the university, have I heard of any one being your enemy who was not a Calvinist; a sect wherein good-humoured and gracefully-minded men are scanty. valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves.' "One might well imagine," said he, "unpleasing to themselves, if full of melancholy and indisposition. But how much of truth and wisdom is compressed in these few sentences! Do not you wonder that a man capable of all this, should likewise be capable of such foolery as the following? "First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen." I looked with wonder at him, knowing his seriousness and gravity, his habits and powers of ratiocination, and his blameless life. But perhaps I owe to his question the intensity and sedulity with which I have examined every page of Bacon. He called the words I have quoted, dull and colourless bombast; he declared them idle in allusion, and false, and impious. I was appalled. He added, "I do not know, Mr. Newton, whether you have brothers; if you have, what would you think of your father, when he gave a cherry to one, a whipping to a second, and burnt the fingers of a third against the bars of his kitchen grate; and vouchsafed no better reason for it, than that he had resolved to do so the very night he begot them? Election in such a case is partiality; partiality is injustice. Is God unjust?” Barrow. Do not attribute the failing to the sect, which hath many strong texts of Scripture for its support; but rather think that the doctrines are such as are most consentaneous to the malignant and morose. There are acrid plants that attract as many insects as the sweeter, but insects of another kind. All substances have their commodities, all opinions their partisans. I have been happy in my pupils; but in none of them have I observed such a spirit of investigation as in you. Keep it, however, within the precincts of experimental and sure philosophy, which are spacious enough for the excursions of the most vigorous mind, and varied enough for the most inconstant and flighty. Never hate, never dislike men, for difference of religion. Some receive baleful impressions in it more easily than others, as they do diseases. We do not hate a child for catching the small-pox, but pity its sores and blemishes. Let the Calvinist hate us: he represents his God" Bacon had much sagacity, but no sincerity; as a hater, he represents him as capricious. I wish he would love us, even from caprice; but he seems to consider this part of the divine nature as a weakness. Come; unroll your paper; let me hear what you have to say on Bacon's Essays; a volume I place in the hand of those only who appear to me destined to be great. Newton. He says in his Preface, "I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current." I could have answered him, by God's help, if he had given me time; but he went on, and said, much force, but no firmness. It is painful to discover in him the reviler of Raleigh, the last relic of heroism in the dastardly court of James: it is horrible to hear him, upon another occasion, the apologist of a patron's disgrace and death: the patron's whose friendly hand had raised him to the first steps of the highest station." "Sir," answered I, "his political conduct is not the question before us." "It may, however," said he, "enlighten us in regard to his candour, and induce us to ask ourHow can the very thing of which you are speak-selves whether, in matters of religion, he delivered ing be another? Barrow. This is a chasm in logic, into which many have fallen. Newton. I had scarcely begun the first Essay, when an elderly gentleman of another college came into the room, took up the book, and read aloud, This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may, perhaps, come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false his thoughts exactly, and whether he may not have conformed his expression of them to the opinions of his master." Barrow. I hope you dropped the discussion after this. Newton. No; I cried resolutely, "Sir, when I am better prepared for it, I may have something to say with you on your irreverent expressions." Barrow. Mr. Newton, do not be ruffled. Bacon spoke figuratively; so did Moses, to whom the allusion was made. Let the matter rest, my dear friend. Newton. I told him plainly he was unfair: he was no friend to Bacon. He smiled at me and continued, "My good Newton, I am as ready to be told when I am unfair as you are to have your watch set right when it goes amiss. You say I will ask the professor of surgery whether a cut in the finger is worse than a scrofula: I will then go to the professor of divinity, and ask him, whether the best christian in Cambridge ought to be hanged to-morrow morning." am no friend to Bacon; and in truth, after the experience he left us in the Earl of Essex, he is not precisely the man to place one's friendship on. Yet surely no folly is greater than hatred of those we never saw, and from whom we can have received no injury. Often do I wonder when I hear I stared at him: whereupon he declared that violent declamations against theories and opi- every church on earth is heretical and schismatinions; which declamations I think are as ill-cal, if the word of Christ is the foundation of the directed as they would be against currents of air or water-courses. We may keep out of their way if we will. I estimate the genius of Bacon as highly as perhaps you do, and in this Essay I find a single sentence which I would rather have written than all the volumes of all the Greek philosophers let me read it. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.'" Barrow. Magnificent as Shakspeare. Newton. He who wrote tragedies? true; and that the fellow who was hanged last week for corruption of manners had, according to the decision of Bacon, more christianity in him than all the heads of colleges. "When he would follow theologians," said my friend, "he falls into gross absurdities: he corrects himself, or only trips harmlessly, when he walks alone." 66 I myself was obliged to agree with my disputant, in censuring an exception. Speaking of sanguinary persecutions to force consciences, the author blames them, except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, &c." Now who shall Barrow. The same: I have lately been reading decide what is overt scandal, or what is blasthem. phemy? That which is prodigiously so in one age and one country, is not at all in another. Such exceptions are the most pernicious things a great author can sanction. We come now, I Newton. Sir, should you have marked the truths he demonstrated, if any, I shall think it no loss of time to run over them, at my leisure. I have now a question to ask you on the third of these Essays. We find in it that "Quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen the reason was, because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief." This is no truer of the old Paganism than of the later in the same country, which however burns men alive for slight divergencies. "You may imagine," says Bacon, "what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church were the poets." I read this loudly and triumphantly to my friend, who paused and smiled, and then asked me complacently, whether it were better to imprison, burn, and torture, or to send away the audience in good humour and good fellowship; and whether I should prefer the conversation and conviction of Doctor Bonner and Doctor Gardiner to those of Doctor Tibullus and Doctor Ovid. I thought the question too flippant for an answer, which indeed was not quite at hand. He proceeded : "God has this attribute, that he is a jealous God, and therefore his worship and religion will endure no mixture.' His jealousy must be touched to the quick," said my friend; "for every century there comes forth some new pretender, with his sect behind him in the dark passages and his spouse was hardly at her own door after the nuptials, ere she cried out and shrieked against the filthiness of an intruder." I was lifting up my eyes and preparing an ejaculation, when he interrupted me, and continued. "It is certain that heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals; yea, more than corruption of manners: for, as in the natural body a wound, or solution of continuity, is worse than a corrupt humour'. ." Here he laid down the volume, and said, "I Barrow. I side with you. perceive, to the Essay On Revenge. Newton. "There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like: therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?" If this be an excuse, why send a rogue to prison? All the crimes that men commit, are committed because they love themselves better than others; and it is the direction and extent of this loving, to the detriment of others, that constitutes the magnitude of the crime. Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man it is his love. Murder may ensue and shall we not be angry with him for loving himself better than the murdered? On Simulation and Dissimulation, we are told, "The best composition and temperature is, to have a power to feign, if there be no remedy." Barrow. In other words, to lie whenever we find it convenient. The two last decisions you have reported from him, as little become the chancellor as the philosopher; as little the philosopher as the citizen. Why will you not read on? Newton. I am afraid to mention the remark of my visitor on a sentence in the Essay Upon Goodness. Barrow. Fear not: what is it? Newton. "The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall." Barrow. This is a sin the most rarely of all committed in our days. If the earth is to be destroyed by fire, the bottom of a rush-chair will serve to consume all who are guilty of it; and what falls from heaven may fall upon other offenders. Newton. "Do you believe," said my friend, |
