The original copy of Burnet's hiftory, though promised to fome publick * library, has been never given; and who then can prove the fidelity of the publication, when the authenticity of Clarendon's hiftory, though printed with the fanction of one of the first univerfities of the world, had not an unexpected manufcript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question by the two lowest of all human beings, a fcribbler for a party, and a commiffioner of excife?

Vanity is often no lefs mifchievous than negligence or difhonefty. He that poffeffes a valuable manufcript, hopes to raise its efteem by concealment, and delights in the diftinction which he imagines himself to obtain by keeping the key of a treasure which he neither uses nor imparts. From him it falls to fome other owner, lefs vain, but more negligent, who confiders it as useless lumber, and rids himself of the incumbrance.

Yet there are fome works which the authors muft confign unpublished to pofterity, however uncertain be the event, however hopeless be the truft. He that writes the hiftory of his own times, if he adheres fteadily to truth, will write that which his own times will not eafily endure. He must be content to repofite his book till all private paffions fhall ceafe, and love and hatred give way to curiofity.

But many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not

It would be proper to repofite, in fome publick place, the manufcript of Clarendon, which has not efcaped all fufpicion of unfaithful publication.

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fend

fend them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prefcribed to themselves fuch a degree of exactnefs as human diligence can scarcely attain. Lloyd, says Burnet, did not lay out his learning with the fame diligence as he laid it in. He was always hesitating and enquiring, raifing objections and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery. Baker, after many years paffed in biography, left his manufcripts to be buried in a library, becaufe that was imperfect which could never be perfected.

Of thefe learned men, let those who aspire to the fame praife, imitate the diligence, and avoid the fcrupulofity. Let it be always remembered that life is short, that knowledge is endless, and that many doubts deferve not to be cleared. Let those whom nature and study have qualified to teach mankind, tell us what they have learned while they are yet able to tell it, and truft their reputation only to themselves.

NUMB. 66. SATURDAY, July 21, 1759.

is more frequently repeated among

No complaint is more

the learned, than that of the waste made by time among the labours of antiquity. Of those who once filled the civilized world with their renown, nothing is now left but their names, which are left only to raise defires that never can be fatisfied, and forrow which never can be comforted.

Had all the writings of the ancients been faithfully delivered down from age to age, had the Alexandrian library been fpared, and the Palatine repofitories remained unimpaired, how much might we have known of which we are now doomed to be ignorant! how many laborious enquiries, and dark conjectures, how many collations of broken hints. and mutilated paffages, might have been spared! We should have known the fucceffions of princes, the revolutions of empire, the actions of the great, and opinions of the wife, the laws and conftitutions of every state, and the arts by which publick grandeur and happiness are acquired and preferved; we fhould have traced the progrefs of life, feen colonies from diftant regions take poffeffion of European deferts, and troops of favages fettled into communities by the defire of keeping what they had acquired; we should have traced the gradations of civility, and travelled upward to the original of things by the light of hiftory, till in remoter times it had glimmered in fable, and at laft funk into darknefs.

If the works of imagination had been lefs diminished, it is likely that all future times might have been fupplied with inexhaustible amusement by the fictions of antiquity. The tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides would have fhewn all the stronger paffions in all their diverfities; and the comedies of Menander would have furnished all the maxims of domeftick life. Nothing would have been neceffary to moral wisdom but to have ftudied these great mafters, whofe knowledge would have guided doubt, and whofe authority would have filenced cavils.

Such are the thoughts that rife in every ftudent, when his curiofity is eluded, and his fearches are frustrated; yet it may perhaps be doubted, whether our complaints are not fometimes inconfiderate, and whether we do not imagine more evil than we feel. Of the ancients, enough remains to excite our emulation, and direct our endeavours. Many of the works which time has left us, we know to have been those that were most esteemed, and which antiquity. itself confidered as models; fo that, having the originals, we may without much regret lofe the imitations. The obfcurity which the want of contemporary writers often produces, only darkens fingle paffages, and thofe commonly of flight importance, The general tendency of every piece may be known, and though that diligence deferves praife which leaves nothing unexamined, yet its mifcarriages are not much to be lamented; for the most useful truths are always univerfal, and unconnected with accidents and cuftoms.

Such is the general confpiracy of human nature against contemporary merit, that if we had inherited

from

from antiquity enough to afford employment for the laborious, and amusement for the idle, I know not what room would have been left for modern genius or modern induftry; almost every fubject would have been pre-occupied, and every ftyle would have been fixed by a precedent from which few would have ventured to depart. Every writer would have had a rival, whofe fuperiority was already acknowledged, and to whofe fame his work would, even before it was feen, be marked out for a facrifice.

We fee how little the united experience of mankind have been able to add to the heroick characters displayed by Homer, and how few incidents the fertile imagination of modern Italy has yet produced, which may not be found in the Iliad and Ody Jey. It is likely, that if all the works of the Athenian philofophers had been extant, Malbranche and Locke would have been condemned to be filent readers of the ancient metaphyficians; and it is apparent, that if the old writers had all remained, the Idler could not have written a difquifition on the lofs.