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which very often he did not want. The adventure of Eppendorf is another proof how much dearer his money was to him than his character. Notwithstanding these faults, never man enjoyed a greater personal consideration. All the scholars, and all the princes of Europe, looked upon him as an oracle. Even Charles V. and Francis I. agreed in this. If we inquire why this happened to him rather than to some other great men, of a merit equal, and perhaps superior to Erasmus, we must say that it was owing to the time when he lived; when the world awaking from a sleep of a thousand years, all orders of men applied themselves to letters with an enthusiasm which produced in them the highest esteem and veneration for one of their principal restorers. Besides, as the general attention from piety, from curiosity, from vanity, and from interest, was directed towards the religious disputes, a great divine was the fashionable character; and all parties endeavoured to attract or preserve him. But to which of those parties did Erasmus adhere? His writings, and even his conduct, were often equivocal. The Catholics claim him, though they acknowledge that he was often indiscreet. Le Clerc challenges him for the Protestants, though he blames him for not professing what he knew to be the truth; and attributes his reserve solely to timidity and selfinterest. Erasmus had certainly exposed all the grosser superstitions of the Romish worship to the ridicule of the public; and had his free opinion been taken, I believe that he was a Protestant upon most of the contested points. But many other motives might restrain him from a declara

tion. He was always persuaded that any speculative truths were dearly purchased at the expense of practical virtue and public peace. Besides, many considerations might often make him balance as to those truths; prejudices of education, the authority of the fathers, and a natural inclination to scepticism. Add to all this, that really disapproving many things in the Protestant communion, though more in the Romish, by remaining in the loose situation of a man who was unwilling to quit the religion of his ancestors, he could blame many things in it with freedom; whereas, had he deserted it, he must either have set up a standard himself, or else have enlisted blindly under that of Luther or Eco Campudius. It is surprising that Erasmus, who could see through much more plausible fables, believed firmly in witchcraft.

GIBBON.

LEIBNITZ.

THE genius and studies of Leibnitz have ranked his name with the first philosophic names of his age and country; but his reputation, perhaps, would be more pure and permanent, if he had not ambitiously grasped the whole circle of human science. As a theologian, he successively contended with the sceptics, who believe too little, and with the papists, who believe too much, and with the heretics, who believe otherwise than is inculcated by the Lutheran confession of Augsburgh. Yet the philosopher betrayed his love of union and toleration: his faith in revelation was accused, while he proved the Trinity by the prin

ciples of logic; and in the defence of the attributes and providence of the Deity, he was suspected of a secret correspondence with his adversary Bayle. The metaphysician expatiated on the fields of air: his preestablished harmony of the soul and body might have provoked the jealousy of Plato; and his optimism, the best of all possible worlds, seems an idea too vast for a mortal mind. He was a physician in the large and genuine sense of the word like his brethren, he amused himself with creating a globe; and his Protogea, or Primitive Earth, has not been useless to the last hypothesis of Buffon, which prefers the agency of fire to that of water. I am not worthy to praise the mathematician: but his name is mingled in all the problems and discoveries of the times; the masters of the art were his rivals and disciples: and if he borrowed from Sir Isaac Newton the sublime method of fluxions, Leibnitz was at least the Prometheus who imparted to mankind the sacred fire which he had stolen from the gods. His curiosity extended to every branch of chymistry, mechanics, and the arts; and the thirst of knowledge was always accompanied with the spirit of improvement. The vigour of his youth had been exercised in the schools of jurisprudence; and while he taught, he aspired to reform, the laws of nature and nations, of Rome and Germany. The annals of Brunswick, of the empire, of the ancient and modern world, were present to the mind of the historian; and he could turn from the solution of a problem to the dusty parchments and barbarous style of the records of the middle age. His genius was more nobly directed to investigate the origin 3 с

VOL. II.

of language and nations; nor could he assume the character of a grammarian without forming the project of a universal idiom and alphabet. These various studies were often interrupted by the occasional politiar of the times; and his pen was always ready in the cause of the princes and patrons to whose service he was attached: many hours were consumed in a learned correspondence with all Europe: and the philosopher amused his leisure in the composition of French and Latin poetry. Such an example may display the extent and powers of the human understanding, but even his powers were dissipated by the multitude of his pursuits. He attempted more than he could finish; he designed more than he could execute; his imagination was too easily satisfied with a bold and rapid glance on the subject which he was impatient to leave; and Leibnitz may be compared to those heroes, whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest.

GIBBON.

BAYLE.

BAYLE was the son of a Calvinist minister in a remote province in France, at the foot of the Pyrenees. For the benefit of education, the Protestants were tempted to risk their children in the Catholic universities; and in the twenty-second year of his age, young Bayle was seduced by the arts and arguments of the jesuits of Thoulouse. He remained about seventeen months (March 19, 1699-August 19, 1670) in their hands, a voluntary captive; and a letter to his parents, which

our senses.

the new convert composed or subscribed (April 15, 1670) is darkly tinged with the spirit of popery. But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he thought: his piety was offended by the excessive worship of creatures; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the evidence of His return to the communion of a falling sect was a bold and disinterested step, that exposed him to the rigour of the laws; and a speedy flight to Geneva protected him from the resentment of his spiritual tyrants, unconscious as they were of the full value of the prize which they had lost. Had Bayle adhered to the Catholic church, had he embraced the ecclesiastical profession, the genius and favour of such a proselyte might have aspired to wealth and honours in his native country: but the hypocrite would have found less happiness in the comforts of a benefice, or the dignity of a mitre, than he enjoyed at Rotterdam in a private state of exile, indigence, and freedom. Without a country, or a patron, or a prejudice, he claimed the liberty and subsisted by the labours of his pen: the inequality of his voluminous works is explained and excused by his alternately writing for himself, for the booksellers, and for posterity; and if a severe critic would reduce him to a single folio, that relic, like the books of the Sibyl, would become still more valuable. A calm and lofty spectator of the religious tempest, the philosopher of Rotterdam condemned with equal firmness the persecution of Louis the Fourteenth and the republican maxims of the Calvinists; their vain prophecies,

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