piece together, and out of these rich materials to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences, which, however, might be still improved and much expedited if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections.

He assured me "that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the number of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech."

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person for his great communicativeness, and promised, "if ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I would do him justice as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine;” the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed. I told him," although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner, yet I would take such caution that he should have the honour entire without a rival." We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.

The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but nouns.

The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever, and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity; for it is plain that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, "that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on." And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers, -such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things, which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of these sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they meet in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an

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hour together, then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.

But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets, and under his arms enough to supply him; and in his house he cannot be at a loss. Therefore, the room where company meet who practise this art is full of all things ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse.

Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it should serve as a universal language to be understood in all civilized nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. And thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.

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3. THE SPIDER AND THE BEE.- BATTLE OF THE BOOKS.") (This pamphlet was written to defend the superiority of the ancients over the moderns in learning; the Bee represents the Ancients, the Spider the Moderns.)

Upon the highest corner of a large window in the library, there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out on all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below; when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went, where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel, which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final dissolution; or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the ragged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very

near at his wits' end; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events, for they knew each other by sight-" Rogue, rogue," cried the spider, "you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters." "By my troth," says the bee, “the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry, to urge on his own reasons, without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined in his mind against all conviction. "Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance, born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe? Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics 1) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant, at least, that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music, and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit, indeed, all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture and mathematics, I have little to say: in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method enough; but by woful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art. You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this: whether is the

1 The moderns contended for their superiority to the ancients especially in mathematics.

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265 nobler being of the two, that which by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding, and engendering on itself, turns all into venom, producing nothing at all but fly-bane and a cobweb; or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax." This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent a while, waiting in suspense what would be the issue, which was not long undetermined; for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a reply, and left the spider, like an orator, collected in himself, and just prepared to burst out.

It happened on this emergency that Æsop broke silence first. He had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange effect of the regent's humanity,' who had torn off his title-page, sorely defaced one half of his leaves, and chained him fast among a shelf of moderns: where, soon discovering how high the quarrel was likely to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself into a thousand forms. At length, in the borrowed shape of an ass, the regent mistook him for a modern; by which means he had time and opportunity to escape to the ancients, just when the spider and the bee were entering into their contest; to which he gave his attention with a world of pleasure, and when it was ended, swore in the loudest key, that in all his life he had never known two cases so parallel and adapt to each other, as that in the window and this upon the shelves. The disputants, said he, have admirably managed the dispute between them, have taken in the full strength of all that is to be said on both sides, and exhausted the substance of every argument pro and con. It is but to adjust the reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then to compare the labours and fruits of each, as the bee has learnedly deduced them, and we shall find the conclusion fall plain and close upon the moderns and us. For, pray, gentlemen, was ever anything so modern as the spider in his air, his turns, and his paradoxes? he argues in behalf of you his brethren and himself with many boastings of his native stock and great genius; that he spins wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or assistance from without. Then he displays to you his great skill in architecture and improvement in the mathematics. To all this the bee, as an advocate retained by us the ancients, thinks fit to answer, that if one may judge of the great genius or inventions of the moderns by what they have produced, you will hardly have countenance to bear you out in boasting of either. Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt spun out of your own brains, the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders' webs, may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a corner. For anything else of

1 Bentley, the regent here referred to, had shortly before written a work to show that the greater part of Esop's fables was of comparatively modern date.

genuine that the moderns may pretend to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and satire, much of a nature and substance with the spider's poison; which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin of the age. As for us the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice: that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

V. DANIEL DEFOE.

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DANIEL DEFOE was born in London in 1663. His father was a small tradesman and a Dissenter, and young Daniel's education was, consequently, very limited, being confined to a few years' instruction in a Dissenting academy near London. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a hosier; but his ambition prompting him to something higher than the counter, he joined in Monmouth's rebellion, and having fortunately escaped the notice of Jeffreys and Kirke, he returned again to his former occupation. But Defoe was not adapted for mercantile life, he neglected his business, devoted his whole attention to literature and politics, and spent his time in writing pamphlets, from which he derived scarce any profit, lost all his money, and became bankrupt. Once only did his prospects brighten: in 1689 he wrote his famous poem the True-born Englishman," in vindication of William and the Dutch, which was very popular and proved equally remunerative; but his prosperity was short-lived; in the beginning of the next reign the Commons voted one of his books libellous, and ordered it to be burned by the hangman, and the unfortunate author was fined, pilloried, and imprisoned. In prison his pen was indefatigably employed, chiefly in writing a periodical called the "Review,” till at length, Harley having occasion for his talents, employed him on some government missions of importance, for which he was rewarded with a pension. Still untaught by experience, he again engaged in political controversy, and was once more fined and imprisoned; and profiting by this severe lesson, on his release he abandoned politics, and devoted himself to the composition of works of fiction. In 1719 appeared "Robinson Crusoe," and before his death in 1731, it was followed by "Moll Flanders," "Captain Singleton," "Colonel Jack," "History of the Plague," &c. Considering the universal popularity of "Robinson Crusoe," it can hardly be necessary to say that Defoe is entitled to stand in the very foremost rank of our writers of fiction. Without any high power of imagination, with very little ability in delineating character or exciting the emotions, he notwithstanding surpasses every other author in the faculty of producing in the mind