She has no other wash, upon my at St. Mark's of a mountebank. knowledge, for that same envied complexion of hers but her marshes. My lords, I know what I say, but you will never have done with it, that neither the great Turk, nor any of those little Turks her neighbours, have been able to spoil her! Why you may as well wonder that weasels do not suck eggs in swans' nests. Do you think that it has lain in the devotion of her beads? which you that have puked so much at Popery, are now at length resolved shall consécrate Mr. Parson, and be dropped by every one of his congregation, while those same whimsical intelligences your surveyors (you will break my heart) give the turn to your primum mobile! And so I think they will; for you will find that money is the primum mobile, and they will turn you thus out of some three or four hundred thousand pounds: a pretty sum for urns and balls, for boxes and pills, which these same quacksalvers are to administer to the parishes; and for what disease I marvel! Or how does it work? Out comes a constable, an overseer, and a Mr. Speaker, I am amazed!" churchwarden! (From the Same.) INEQUALITY IN COMMONWEALTHS UPON these three last orders the Archon seemed to be haranguing at the head of his army in this manner: "My dear Lords and excellent Patriots, "A government of this make is a commonwealth for increase. Of those for preservation, the inconveniences and frailties have been shown; their roots are narrow, such as do not run, have no fibres, their tops weak and dangerously exposed to the weather, except you chance to find one, as Venice, planted in a flower-pot, and if she grows, she grows top-heavy, and falls too. But you cannot plant an oak in a flower-pot; she must have earth for her root, and heaven for her branches. Imperium Oceano, famam quæ terminet astris. "Rome was said to be broken by her own weight, but poetically; for that weight by which she was pretended to be VOL. II 2 L ruined, was supported in her emperors by a far slighter foundation. And in the common experience of good architecture, there is nothing more known than that buildings stand the firmer and the longer for their own weight, nor ever swerve through any other internal cause than that their materials are corruptible; but the people never die, nor, as a political body, are subject to any other corruption than that which derives from their government. Unless a man will deny the chain of causes, in which he denies God, he must also acknowledge the chain of effects; wherefore there can be no effect in Nature that is not from the first cause, and those successive links of the chain without which it could not have been. Now except a man can show the contrary in a commonwealth, if there be no cause of corruption in the first make of it, there can never be any such effect. Let no man's superstition impose profaneness upon this assertion; for as man is sinful, but yet the universe is perfect, so may the citizen be sinful, and yet the commonwealth be perfect. And as man, seeing the world is perfect, can never commit any such sin as shall render it imperfect, or bring it to a natural dissolution, so the citizen, where the commonwealth is perfect, can never commit any such crime as will render it imperfect, or bring it to a natural dissolution. Το come to experience: Venice, notwithstanding we have found some flaws in it, is the only commonwealth in the make whereof no man can find a cause of dissolution; for which reason we behold her (though she consists of men that are not without sin) at this day with one thousand years upon her back, yet for any internal cause, as young, as fresh, and free from decay, or any appearance of it, as she was born; but whatever in Nature is not sensible of decay by the course of a thousand years, is capable of the whole age of Nature; by which calculation, for any check that I am able to give myself, a commonwealth, rightly ordered, may for any internal causes be as immortal or long-lived as the world. But if this be true, those commonwealths that are naturally fallen, must have derived their ruin from the rise of them. Israel and Athens died not natural but violent deaths, in which manner the world itself is to die. We are speaking of those causes of dissolution which are natural to government; and they are but two, either contradiction or inequality. If a commonwealth be a contradiction, she must needs destroy herself; and if she be unequal, it tends to strife, and strife to ruin. By the former of these fell Lacedemon, by the latter Rome. Lacedemon being made altogether for war, and yet not for increase, her natural progress became her natural dissolution, and the building of her own victorious hand too heavy for her foundation, so that she fell indeed by her own weight. But Rome perished through her native inequality, which how it inveterated the bosoms of the senate and the people each against other, and even to death, has been shown at large. (From the Same.) SAMUEL BUTLER [Samuel Butler was born in 1612 and died in 1680. The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler, Author of Hudibras, were published in 1759 by R. Thyer, Keeper of the Public Library at Manchester. Less than half of the two volumes is in verse; the remainder, in prose, consists of a few tracts, principally of political satire and controversy, a series of Characters belonging to the same class of writing as Sir Thomas Overbury's and Earle's Microcosmography, and a few selections from Butler's commonplace-books. The editor had manuscript authority for most, not all, of the contents of his book, and the British Museum possesses some of the manuscript sources in Butler's own hand, and some of Mr. Thyer's transcripts. Of these MSS. a considerable portion remains unedited: sixty-six characters transcribed but not sent to the press,-one of them being the character of a publisher,—and a great quantity of miscellaneous notes, for which Butler himself has provided headings, Learning and Knowledge," "Religion," "Reason," Opinion, Nature," History" (with a notice of the Kingdom of Yvetot), "Princes and Governments," Contradictions." The last, with Inconsistent Opinions," is a favourite theme. Of the series of Characters there are four in the author's hand, written out fair, numbered and paged, with English headings in Greek letters; Bankrupt," numbered 202, paged 237, dated 6th October '67; 'War," 206, 13th October '67; Horsecourser," 204, 8th October '67 ; "Churchwarden," 203, 8th October '67. At least twenty of these essays seem to have been lost. The character of an Hector" is here printed from the MS. (Add. 32,626); the other three are from the Remains. ] " 3966 " HUDIBRAS contains the essence of Butler's studies; the ingredients of his satire are to be found in his prose collections; 1 his prose essays refer, sometimes explicitly, to the work by which he had made his name. But though Hudibras is Butler's master 1 "I am informed by Mr. Thyer of Manchester, the excellent editor of this author's reliques, that he could show something like Hudibras in prose. He has in his possession the commonplace-book, in which Butler reposited, not such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or influences, as occasion prompted, or meditation produced; those thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the labour of those who write for immortality."-JOHNSON: Life of Butler. |