THE HISTORY of empire is that of the miseries of humankind; the history of the sciences is that of their splendor and happiness. If a thousand other considerations render the study of the latter interesting to the philosopher, this reflection alone is sufficient to recommend it to every friend of mankind.

  How ardently do I wish a truth so consolatory admitted of no exception! But alas! the man too often intrudes on the retirement of the student: and hence even in his closet, that asylum of contemplative wisdom, he is still misled by his prejudices, agitated by his passions, or debased by his follies.

  The influence of fashion is founded on the inconstancy of man; the causes of its despotism being as frivolous as the effects of its tyranny are fatal. Men of letters are, nevertheless, afraid to cast off its yoke, and, though reflection causes some delay in their submission, it serves to render it but the more graceful.

  All ages and countries have given a preference, not seldom unjustly, to some particular science, while they permitted others to languish and sink into a contempt equally unreasonable. Thus logic and metaphysics under the successors of Alexander, polity and elocution during the Roman republic, history and poetry in the Augustan Age, grammar and jurisprudence in that of the Lower Empire, the scholastic philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the Belles-Lettres, till within the times of our fathers, have all in their turns shared the admiration and contempt of mankind.

  Natural philosophy and the mathematics are now in possession of the throne: their sister sciences fall prostrate before them; are ignominiously chained to their car, or otherwise servilely employed to adorn their triumph. Perhaps their reign too is short, and their fall approaching.

  It would be a task worthy a man of abilities to trace that revolution in religion, government, and manners, that hath successively bewildered, wasted, and corrupted mankind. It were prudent for him therein not to seek hypothesis, but much more so not to avoid it.

  If the Greeks had never been reduced to slavery, the Romans had been still barbarians. Constantinople falling before the sword of Mahomet, the Muses were abandoned to fortune till assembled and patronized by the Medici. This illustrious family encouraged Literature. Erasmus did still more; he cultivated letters himself, while Homer and Cicero became familiar to climes unknown to Alexander and nations unconquered by Rome. In those days it was thought a fine accomplishment to study and admire the Ancients; in ours it is judged more easy and polite to neglect and despise them. I am apt to think there is some reason on both sides. The soldier then read them in his tent; the statesman studied them in his closet. Even the fair sex, usually content with the empire of the graces, and willing to resign superior knowledge to ours, were subject to the contagion; and every Delia wished to find a Tibullus in the person of her lover. It was from Herodotus that Elizabeth (a sovereign whose name is revered in the annals of Literature) learned to maintain the rights of humanity against another Xerxes. It was in Æschylus she saw her magnanimity celebrated under the names of the victorious heroes of Salamis. Christina preferred knowledge to the government of a kingdom; for which the politician may despise, and the philosopher will probably blame her. The man of letters, however, cannot fail to cherish the memory of that Princess, who not only studied the Ancients herself, but even rewarded their commentators. It was by her that Saumaise was honored with marks of distinction; who, though he did not derive the admiration in which his cotemporaries held him, was above that contempt thrown upon him by his successors.

  This Princess, without doubt, carried her regard for such writers too far. For my part, though sometimes their advocate, never their partisan, I will freely confess I think them as coarse in their manners as they were minute and trifling in their works. A pedantic erudition cramping their imagination, they were rather dull compilers than ingenious scholiasts. The age was just enlightened enough to perceive the utility of their researches, but neither sensible nor polished sufficiently to know what advantages they might have reaped by the light of philosophy.

  At length the day appeared. Descartes, indeed, was not eminent in letters: polite literature, however, is extremely obliged to him. An acute philosopher, who inherited his manner, investigated the true elements of criticism. Bossu, Boileau, Rapin, and Brumoy informed the public also of the value of those treasures it had in its possession. One of those societies, that have better immortalized the name of Louis XIV. than all the pernicious triumphs of his ambition, had already begun its researches; societies in which we see erudition, precision of sentiment, and politeness united; in which we meet with so many important discoveries, and sometimes, what hardly yields to discoveries, a modest and learned ignorance.

  If men employed their reason as much in their action as in their conversation, the Belles-Lettres would not only engage the esteem of the wife, but become equally the object of vulgar admiration.

  It is from this era we may date the commencement of their decline. Le Clerc, to whom both freedom and science are indebted, complained of it above sixty years ago. But it was in the famous dispute, concerning the Ancients and the Moderns, that Letters received the mortal blow. Never sure was carried on so unequal a combat! The strict logic of Teraffon, the refined philosophy of Fontenelle, the elegant and happy manner of De la Mothe, the sprightly raillery of St. Hyacinthe, all joined in concert to reduce Homer to a level with Chapelain. The adversaries of this formidable band answered them only by an attention to trifles; with I know not what pretentions to natural superiority in the Ancients; with prejudice, abuse, and quotations. The laugh was entirely against them; while the Ancients, who were the subject of the dispute, came in for a share of the ridicule that burst on their defenders,—that agreeable nation, which had unthinkingly adopted the principles of Lord Shaftesbury, not making any distinction between the false and the ridiculous.

  Our philosophers have ever since affected to be astonished that men can pass their whole lives in acquiring the knowledge of mere words and facts, in burdening the memory without improving the understanding. At the same time, our men of wit are sufficiently sensible of the advantages they derive from the ignorance of their readers, and therefore load the Ancients with contempt, as well as those who make them their study.

  To this picture let me subjoin a few reflections, which may fix a just estimation on the Belles-Lettres.

  The examples of great men prove nothing. Caffini, before he acquired a name for his astronomical discoveries, had busied himself with judicial astrology. When such examples, however, are numerous, they prejudice the mind in favor of an inquiry, the event of which they serve afterwards to confirm. One must immediately conceive that a mind capable of thinking for itself, a lively and brilliant imagination, can never relish a science that depends solely on the memory. Yet of those whose superior talents have successively instructed mankind, many have applied themselves entirely to the study of the Belles-Lettres; still more have encouraged and in a less degree cultivated them; but not one, at least hardly one, of them all ever held them in contempt. All antiquity was known to Grotius; a knowledge that enabled him to unfold the Sacred Oracles, to combat ignorance and superstition, to soften the calamities and mitigate the horrors of war.

  If Descartes, devoted entirely to his Philosophy, despised every kind of study that had not an immediate affinity with it, Newton did not disdain to form a system of Chronology which has had both its advocates and admirers; Gassendi, the greatest philosopher among the greatest men of letters, and the greatest man of letters among the philosophers, not only defended the doctrines of Epicurus, but critically explained his writings; Leibnitz laid aside his profound researches into history, to employ himself in the more abstruse researches of the mathematics. Had his edition of the “Capella” appeared, his example alone in that valuable acquisition to the literary world had justified the conduct of all those who apply themselves to letters. An eternal monument exists, however, of the united efforts of erudition and genius in the “Dictionary” of Mr. Bayle.

  If we confine ourselves to such as have devoted almost all their time and study to Literature, the reader of taste will always know how to distinguish the subtle and extensive wit of Erasmus; the accuracy of Casaubon and Gerard Vossius; the readiness of Justus Lipsius; the taste and delicacy of Taneguy le Febvre; the daring penetration of Bentley; the agreeable manner of Massieu and De Fraguier; the solid and ingenious criticism of Sallier; and the profound philosophical genius of Le Clerc and Fréret. He will never confound these truly great men with such mere compilers as Gruter, Saumaise, Masson, and many others, whose works, though not altogether useless, seldom gratify taste, never excite admiration, and in general only lay claim to the lowest kind of approbation.

  The Ancients have left models for such writers as dare to copy after them, and lectures to others, from which they may deduce the principles of true taste, and learn to employ their leisure in the study of those valuable productions, wherein truth appears embellished with all the graces of the imagination.

  It is the province of poets and orators to paint the beauties of nature. The whole universe supplies them with tints: of that infinite variety, however, which on every side presents itself, the images they employ may be ranged in three classes, those relating to man, to nature, and to art. The images of the first class, or those which compose the picture of man,—his greatness, his meanness, his passions, his caprices; these are they which conduct the writer in the surest path to immortality. Every time one reads Euripides or Terence, one discovers new beauties. It is not, however, to the disposition or conduct of their performances, which are in this respect often defective; nor is it to their delicacy or simplicity of style, that these poets owe their reputation. No, the heart beholds the picture of itself in their just and lively descriptions, and confesses it with pleasure.

  Nature, vast and extensive as it is, hath furnished the poets with but few images. Confined by the nature of the object, or the prejudices of mankind, to the exterior of things, they have succeeded only in painting the successive variety of the seasons; a sea agitated by storms; the zephyrs, wafting love and pleasure on the breeze, and the like. A few writers of genius were enough to exhaust these images.

  Those of art remained. By the images of art I mean all those things, by which men have embellished, defaced, or diversified nature, religion, laws, or custom. The poets have universally made free with all these, and it must be owned they were in the right. Their fellow-countrymen understood them with ease, and perused them with pleasure. They were pleased to see the genius of their great men exercised on things which had made their ancestors respectable, on subjects they revered as sacred, or practiced as useful.

  The manners of the Ancients were more favorable to poetry than ours,—which is a strong presumption they surpassed us in that sublime art.

  In proportion as the arts grew more perfect, they grew less complex; in war, in politics, in religion, the most important effects have proceeded from the most simple causes.

  Doubtless a Marshal Saxe and a Duke of Cumberland understood the art of war better than Achilles or an Ajax:—

  Are the battles, however, which are described by the French poet diversified like those of the Greek? Are his heroes equally interesting? The single combats of the chiefs, the long conversations held with the dying, the unexpected rencounters we meet with, all betray the imperfection of the military art, but furnish the poet with the means of making us acquainted with his heroes, and interesting us in their good or ill fortune. At present, armies are vast machines animated by the breath of their General. The Muse denies her assistance in the description of their evolutions: she is afraid to penetrate the clouds of powder and smoke that conceal from her sight alike the coward and the brave, the private sentinel and the commander in chief.

  The ancient republics of Greece were ignorant of the first principles of good policy. The people met in tumultuous assemblies rather to determine than to deliberate. Their factions were impetuous and lasting; their insurrections frequent and terrible; their most peaceful hours full of distrust, envy, and confusion. The citizens were indeed unhappy; but their writers, whose imaginations were warmed by such dreadful objects, described them naturally as they were felt. A peaceable administration of the laws,—those salutary institutions, which, projected in the cabinet of a sovereign or his council, diffuse happiness over a whole nation,—excites only the poet’s admiration, the coldest of all the passions.

  The ancient mythology, which attributed life and intelligence to all nature, extended its influence to the pen of the poet. Inspired by the Muse, he sung the attributes, the adventures, and misfortunes of his fabulous deities. That Infinite Being, which religion and philosophy have made known to us, is above such description: the sublimest flights become puerile on such a subject. The almighty Fiat of Moses strikes us with admiration, but reason cannot comprehend, nor imagination describe, the operations of a Deity, at whose command alone millions of worlds are made to tremble; nor can we read with any satisfactory pleasure of the devil, in Milton, warring for two whole days in heaven against the armies of the Omnipotent.

  The Ancients knew their advantages, and profited by them accordingly. Of this the masterly performances we still admire are the best proofs.

  But we, who are placed in another clime, and born in another age, are necessarily at a loss to see those beauties, for want of being able to place ourselves in the same point of view with the Greeks and Romans. A circumstantial knowledge of their situation and manners can only enable us to do this. The superficial ideas, the poor information we glean from a commentary, assist us only to seize the more palpable and apparent beauties: all the graces, all the delicacies of their writings escape us; and we are apt to abuse their cotemporaries for want of taste, in lavishing such encomiums on those merits we are too ignorant to discover. An acquaintance with antiquity is the only true comment on the writings of the Ancients: but what is still more necessary, is a certain turn of mind, which is generally the result of it; a sentiment not only making things known, but familiarizing them to our ideas and inducing us to regard them with the eyes of Ancients. The famous example of Perrault may serve to illustrate my meaning. The rudeness of the heroic ages shocked the delicacy of the Parisian. It was in vain that Boileau remonstrated with him, that Homer designed and ought to describe Greeks and not Frenchmen; his judgment was convinced it was right, but he could not be persuaded to be pleased. A small portion of antique taste, if I may so call it, would have done more than all the reasonings of his antagonist.

  I have said that the poets were in the right to make use of artificial images; but I know not whether at the tribunal of fame it will be allowed me. We are all fond of reputation, but nothing is more different than the nature and degree of our passion for fame. Every man has different notions in his desire for reputation. One writer, for instance, seeks only the praise of his cotemporaries. Death puts an end to his hopes and fears of censure or applause; he cares not if in the tomb that incloses his body be buried also his name. Such a man may, without scruple, employ familiar and temporary images, in writing for those whom only he desires to please. Another, on the contrary, bequeaths his name to latest posterity; and pleases himself in thinking that a thousand years after his death, the Indian on the banks of the Ganges, and the Laplander on his hills of snow, will read his works, and envy the happy clime and era that produced so extraordinary a genius.

  Those who are ambitious to please universally must deduce their images from the common resources of mankind, from the human heart and the representations of nature. Pride only can induce writers to exceed these bounds. They may presume, indeed, that the occult beauties of their writings will always secure a family of Burmans, to labor in their explication, and to admire the text the more because they themselves have written the comment….

  There are two hypotheses which always have been, and ever will, subsist. In the one, man is supposed to have received from his Creator reason and will; that he is left to himself to put them to use and regulate his actions accordingly. In the other, he is supposed incapable of acting otherwise than agreeably to the pre-established laws of the Deity, of whom he is only the instrument, whose sentiment deceives him, and when he imagines he follows his own inclination he in fact only pursues that of his master. The latter notion might be suggested to the minds of a people little removed from a primitive state. Little instructed in the movements of so complicated a machine, they saw with admiration the great virtues, the atrocious crimes, the useful inventions of a few singular men, and thought they surpassed the powers of humanity. Hence they conceived, on every side, active deities, inspiring virtue and vice into weak mortals, incapable of resisting their impulsive influence. It was not prudence that inspired Pandarus with the design of breaking the truce, and of aiming a dart at the breast of Menelaus. It was the goddess Minerva excited him to that attempt. The unhappy Phedra was not criminal. No. It was Venus, who, irritated by the flights of Hippolitus, lighted up an incestuous flame in the heart of that Princess, which plunged her into guilt, infamy, and death. Thus a deity was supposed to undertake the charge of every event in life, of every passion of the soul, and every order of society.

  These deities of the moral world, however, these passions and faculties so generalized and personated, had only a metaphysical existence, too occult for the generality of mankind. It became necessary, therefore, to incorporate them with the physical deities; in doing which, allegory has imagined a thousand fantastical relations,—for the mind always requires at least the appearance of truth. It was natural enough for the god of the sea to be also that of the sailors. The figurative expression of the eye, that sees everything at one view; of those rays, which dart through the immensity of the air, might easily be applied to the sun, and make an able prophet and a skillful archer of that luminary. But wherefore must the planet Venus be the mother and goddess of Love? Why must she take her rise out of the foam of the ocean? But we must leave these enigmas to such as may be able to interpret them. No sooner were these moral deities assigned their several departments, than, it is natural to conceive, they engrossed the homage of mankind. They had to do immediately with the heart and the passions, whereas the physical divinities, to whom no moral attributes had been given, fell insensibly into contempt and oblivion. Thus it is only in the earliest ages of antiquity that I descry the smoke on the altars of Saturn.

  From this period the gods became particularly interested in human affairs. Nothing passed of which they were not the authors. But were they the authors of injustice? We are startled at this conclusion: a heathen, however, did not hesitate to admit, and in fact could not doubt it. His gods often suggested very vicious designs. To suggest them, it was necessary they should concur and even take pleasure in them. They had not the resource of a small quantity of evil admissible into the best of possible words. The evil they were accessory to was not only permitted, but authorized; besides, these several divinities, confined to their respective departments, were quite indifferent as to the general good,—with which they had nothing to do. Every one acted agreeably to his own character, and inspired only the passions he was supposed to feel. The god of War was fierce, bloodthirsty, and brutal; the goddess of Wisdom, prudent and reserved; the queen of Love, an amiable, voluptuous goddess, all charm and caprice; sublety and low cunning distinguished the god of Trade; and the cries of the unhappy were supposed to please the ear of the inexorable tyrant o’er the dead, the gloomy monarch of the infernal shades.

  A god, the father of mankind, is equally so to every individual of the species. He is incapable of love or hate. But partial divinities must, doubtless, have their favorites. Could it be supposed they should not prefer those who most resembled themselves! Mars could not but love the Thracians, of whom war was the only occupation; he could not but love those Scythians, whose most delicious potation was composed of the blood of their enemies. The manners of the inhabitants of Cyprus and Corinth, where all was luxury, effeminacy and pleasure, must necessarily engage the goddess of Love. It was but a grateful return, to prefer those people whose manners were a kind of dignified homage to their tutelar divinities. That homage itself was always adapted to their character. The human victims that expired on the altar of Mars; those thousand courtesans who devoted themselves to the services of the Temple of Venus; those famous women of Babylon, who there made a sacrifice of their modesty, could not but obtain for their respective people the most distinguished favor of their protectors. But as the interests of nations are not less opposite than their manners, it became necessary that those gods should adopt the quarrels of their worshipers. “What! shall I patiently behold a city, that has erected a hundred temples to my divinity, fall before the sword of the conqueror? No. Rather will I ——.” It is thus that, among the Greeks, a war kindled on earth soon lighted up the torch of discord in the skies. The siege of Troy put all heaven into confusion. The Scamander reflected the rays that darted from the Ægis of Minerva; was witness of the fatal effect of the arrows taken from the quiver of Apollo, and felt the tremendous trident of Neptune shake the foundations of the earth. Sometimes, indeed, the irresistible decrees of Fate re-established peace. But most generally the several deities mutually agreed to abandon each other’s enemies; for on Olympus, as upon earth, hatred is always more powerful than friendship.

  A refined homage was little suitable to deities of such a kind. The multitude required sensible objects, the image of something to decorate their temples and fix their ideas. The choice, to be sure, must be fixed on the most amiable. But which is that? The human form will doubtless be preferred by men. Should a bull have answered the question, he would probably have determined in favor of some other. Sculpture now began to improve itself in the service of devotion, and the temples were filled with statues of old men and young, women and children, expressive of the different attributes ascribed to their deities.

  Beauty is perhaps only founded on use; the human figure being beautiful only because it is so well adapted to the functions to which it is destined. The figure of the divinity, the same, should be certainly expressive of its properties, and even of its defects. Hence came that absurd generation of deities, who composed only a celestial family, similar to those among mankind: hence their feasts of nectar and ambrosia, and the nourishment they were supposed to receive from the sacrifices. Hence also their quiet slumbers, and their afflicting pains. The gods, thus become only a race of superior men, used often to make visits on earth, inhabit their temples, take pleasure in the amusements of mankind, join in the chase, mix in the dance, and sometimes grow susceptible of the charms of a mortal beauty, and give birth to a race of heroes.

  In those great events, wherein, from the diversity of actors, whose views, situation, and character are different, there arises a unity of action, or rather of effect, it is perhaps only into general causes we must look for the springs of those.

  In more particular events the process of nature is very different from that of the philosophers. In nature there are few effects so simple as to owe themselves to one sole cause; whereas our philosophers are generally attached to one cause, sole and universal. Let us avoid this precipice; on the contrary, if an action appear ever so little complicated, let us admit of general causes, not excluding either hazard or design. Sylla resigned the sovereignty of Rome. Cæsar lost it with his life: nevertheless, their encroachments on liberty were alike preceded by their conquests; before they became the most powerful, they became the most famous among the Romans. Augustus trod nearly in the same steps. A sanguinary tyrant, suspected of cowardice, that greatest of all crimes in the leader of a party, he reached the throne, and soon made those republicans forget they had ever been free. Indeed, the disposition of those people diminishes my surprise. Equally incapable of liberty under Sylla as under Augustus, they were ignorant of this truth in the time of the former: a civil war and two proscriptions, more cruel and bloody than war itself, had taught them, by the time of the latter, that the republic, sinking beneath the weight of its greatness and corruption, could not subsist without a master. Besides, Sylla, one of the first of the nobles, fought at the head of those haughty patricians; who, though they put a sword into the hand of despotism to avenge themselves of their enemies, would not leave it there with the power of converting it to the destruction of themselves. They had conquered with him, not for him: the harangue of Lepidus and the conduct of Pompey make it sufficiently clear that Sylla chose rather to descend from his invidious situation than be thrown headlong from it. But Augustus, after the example of Cæsar, employed only those enterprising adventurers, Agrippa, Mecenas, and Pollio, whose fortunes, attached to his, had been nothing divided among an aristocracy of nobles, but were when united sufficient to crush a new pretender.

  These fortunate circumstances of the debauchery of Antony, the weakness of Lepidus, and the credulity of Cicero, operated in concert with the general disposition, in his favor; but it must be confessed, that though he did not give birth to these circumstances, he employed them with great art and policy. The vast variety of objects that present themselves will not permit to display the nature of that refined government; to describe the yoke that was borne without being felt, the prince undistinguished from the citizens, or the senate respected by its master. We will select, however, one circumstance.

  Augustus, master of the revenues of the empire, and the riches of the world, constantly distinguished between his own particular patrimony and the treasure of the public. By which means he displayed his moderation, in having bequeathed to his heirs effects of less value than the fortunes of many of his subjects; and his love to his country, in having given up to the service of the state two entire patrimonies; together with an immense sum, arising from the legacies of his deceased friends.

  An ordinary degree of penetration is sufficient to discover when an action is at once both cause and effect. In the moral world there are many such; or, rather, there are but few, which do not, more or less, partake of both the one and the other.

  The corruption of all orders of men among the Romans was owing to the extent of their empire, and was itself productive of the greatness of the republic.

  But it requires an uncommon share of judgment, when two things are constantly united, and seem intimately connected, to discern that they are neither effect nor cause to one another.

  The sciences, it is said, take their rise from luxury; an enlightened must be always a vicious people. For my part, I cannot be of this opinion. The sciences are not the daughters of luxury, but both the one and the other owe their birth to industry. The arts, in their rudest state, satisfied the primitive wants of men. In their state of perfection they suggest new ones, even from Vitellius’s shield of Pallas, to the philosophical entertainments of Cicero. But in proportion as luxury corrupts the manners, the sciences soften them; like to those prayers in Homer, which constantly pursue injustice, to appease the fury of that cruel deity.

  Thus have I thrown together a few reflections, which appeared to me just and rational, on the utility of the Belles-Lettres. Happy should I think myself, if, by so doing, I should inspire a taste for them in others. I should entertain too good an opinion of myself, if I did not see the imperfections of this essay; and should have too bad a one if I did not hope, at an age less premature, and with a more extensive knowledge, to be able to correct them. It may possibly be said these reflections are just, but hackneyed and trite, or that they are new, but paradoxical. Where is the author who loves the critics? The former imputation, however, will displease me least, the advantage of the art being more dear to me than the reputation of the artist.