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Of chaste and blameless love destroy the web,
Which the seducer strives to wind around thee.
The faith which I profess, that faith I'll follow;
And, though it lead to dark extremity,

Nor gift, nor promise, artifice, nor guile,

Shall make me swerve one instant from my God.

Such are the two plays of Cervantes. They were written ere the dramatic muses had shaken off their long slumber. They are literary curiosities, and, as such only, we present them to our readers. In the passages we have translated, we have sacrificed every attempt at poetry, and have only aimed to give the sense in a version as literal as the rhythm would permit: were we indeed equal to the task of perfect translation, we should despair of transferring to English blank verse the happy simplicity of the Spanish redondillas. We should be glad to tread still farther within the pleasing precincts of the Spanish drama; but in our next we must proceed to notice other productions of the author of Don Quixote, in that style of composition wherein he has few, if any competitors; and which the English public, who have successively patronised the translations of that most popular novel by Motteux, by Jarvis, and by Smollet, and republications of them in every form, from the splendidly embellished quarto to the humble duodecimo, have hitherto suffered to lie in neglect, and almost oblivion.

M.

ON THE CONFESSION OF IGNORANCE.

"WHOEVER Would be cured of ignorance," says Montaigne, "must confess it." If every one were to act on the Seigneur's recommendation, what a strange revelation of ignorance would there be! In justice, however, to this most candid of all philosophers, who has stripped his heart naked with his own hands, and presented it without any covering, either of shame or falsehood, to the gaze of all posterity, it should be remembered that he has, with the strictest impartiality, declared his own deficiencies in knowledge. "Great abuse in the world is begot," says he," or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses in the world are begot, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance." Accordingly, he tells us that people, who hear him - declare his ignorance in husbandry, whisper in his ear that it is disdain, and that he only neglects to know the instruments of husbandry, its season and order-how they dress his vines-the names and forms of herbs and fruits-how meat is dressed-the names and prices of the stuffs he wears-because he has set his heart on higher knowledge. "They kill me," says the philosopher, "in saying so. This is folly, and rather brutishness

than glory I had rather be a good horseman than a good logician.' Seigneur Michael can afford to make these confessions, but how few are there among the common herd that can speak such truths without injury to their reputation-and ought they to do this? Nay, would it even be useful?

That ode of Anacreon, which describes the attributes which nature has conferred on different animals, might be well applied to the present subject; and it might be shown how the various species of knowledge are confined to certain individuals or classes of men. A Divine, for instance, if he were consulted on a point of law, might very well answer that he knew nothing about the matter; and the lawyer in his turn, if questioned in divinity, might generally reply, with too much truth, that he was wholly ignorant on the subject; and this want of information may certainly be acknowledged without any feeling of shame. The question, therefore, which Sir Thomas More, when abroad, undertook to argue against all the doctors and learned men of Italy," Anne averia caruca capta in vetito namio sint irreplegibilia," that is to say, "whether beasts of the plough taken in withernam are irreplevisable," was not a fair one, because no one could argue it but a lawyer, and he too an English lawyer. In fact, he might as well have propounded that very abstruse and philosophical query "Anne chimera bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones?" But when I enquire from a divine, whether I ought rather to tell a lie or commit a theft; or from a gentleman of the long robe, whether I am most nearly related to my paternal grandfather or my maternal grandmother, I expect to receive an answer; and if either the former or the latter is unable to give me one, I consider him as ignorant of what it is his duty to know; and if he scruples not to confess his ignorance, I say he is also devoid of shame. There is a certain degree of knowledge, which from the daily occupations of life, and from an intercourse with the world, it is almost impossible, that we should not attain: such is the knowledge of common substances and the general operations of nature; yet Montaigne, it seems, was ignorant of many of these things. You see this ignorance in children, and it sometimes happens that they do not lose it when of a larger growth. This continued ignorance proceeds from different causes; sometimes, and perhaps frequently, it is merely the effect of dull perception and slow observation; sometimes it proceeds from the want of proper opportunities of improvement, and occasionally it is the consequence of the mind being too exclusively devoted to one pursuit. An occupation, which necessarily directs all the rays of the intellect to one centre, must prevent them from being diffused over a more extensive field; and, in this view, I believe all professions, strictly pursued, tend to incapacitate the mind from higher and

nobler exertions. Lawyers are said to make bad statesmen. believe it. Their minds have been long accustomed to all the pettiness and minute accuracy of their profession, and they cannot embrace the magnitude of an important question. They are examining every part, when they should be attending to the great whole. A Brahmin will hold his arm in one position, until its power of motion is lost; but it takes less time to give a fixed habit to the mind. A man who is devoted to mathematical studies is seldom good for any thing else. In some instances indeed, a favourite pursuit will so absorb the whole intellect as to banish even common sense from the mind. I know a man in the lowest situation of life, an absolute pauper, who has applied himself with unceasing energy and perseverance to the study of languages, and to that study alone, and who might say with Eiron in the Muses' Looking-Glass,

-If I have any skill, it is
In languages.- -To confess truth,
I might in their own proper speech instruct
All Europe, Asia, and Africa too;

But, in America and the new-found world,

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And yet this man, who reads the Chaldee and Hebrew, who speaks almost all the modern languages of Europe, and who has acquired all his knowledge by his own unassisted exertions, is so devoid of common sense that he will almost attempt to walk through the wall. Can it be that his mind has been so passionately devoted to these acquisitions as to prevent him from giving his attention to any other objects?

Let us examine a little more narrowly Montaigne's advice to confess our ignorance. If ignorance be shameful, and shameful it is where a man has had opportunities of getting rid of it; or where, by his profession, he holds himself out to the world as possessing knowledge which in fact he has not, then I cannot conceive why a man should confess it. I acknowledge that if there were no other way of acquiring information than by exposing our want of it, such an exposure would then become necessary, and one should submit to it, as one does to any other inevitable necessity; but, in this age of books and book-makers, a man may with infinitely greater ease acquire more satisfactory information from consulting his library than by applying to any living Cyclopædia. If I go and consult a book, it does not despise me for my want of knowledge-it does not laugh, or curl the corners of its mouth in good-natured contempt-it does not expose me I do not humiliate myself before it-I do not pray to be instructed; and when I have gained my information, I am under no obligation to it, seeing that when it came into my pos

session, I paid for it the price it was worth. By the by, this is the great advantage of books, that they are both deaf and dumb, and that they never interrupt you or give you advice. My books are my companions, and I enjoy their society in the same way as I do that of my friends, except that I have never the trouble of talking, and that they are always good-humoured and complaisant, and rather more instructive than most of my other acquaintance. I have always found them the most faithful friends; they never desert you in your extremity, but always afford either philosophy to enable one to bear, or amusement to seduce one from the contemplation of pain. I cannot say with Cicero that I am not like those who are ashamed to confess their ignorance, Nec me pudet ut istos, fateri nescire, quod nesciam, for I should be very much ashamed to do so; and I scarcely know when I have more severely felt what may truly be called shame, than when I have been found wanting in something which I ought to have known; and I have always thought this sensation of shame the strongest spur to the acquisition of knowledge. So forcibly do I feel this sentiment, that I am always ashamed when another man is exposing his ignorance in my presence. If it be not shameful to confess your ignorance, then ignorance itself is not shameful. To keep it out of the sight of the world is not to assume a virtue without possessing it; it is merely to conceal a vice: and I never yet heard that it was laudable in a man to declare his own faults. not worth while to conceal it studiously and industriously; far Perhaps it is less should a man resort to falsehood to avoid such an exposure. It is however a thing which should be kept in the back-ground, and never forced on the view and attention of others. This is very different from pretension to knowledge, which, like other species of hypocrisy, is wholly detestable, and to be abevery jured. If people choose to judge of my knowledge on one subject from my information on another, it is their fault, and not mine; I never pretended to know any thing about the matter; and if they are good and foolish enough to think I do, though it would not become me to assist in the deception by a pretension to knowledge, yet it certainly is not my duty to tell them, uncalled on, that I am entirely ignorant on the subject.

How many persons are there, if this rule should be put into execution, who might answer with the gentleman in the New Whig Guide, when questioned respecting their information on any point, that they are "wholly ignorant and uninformed on that and all other subjects." The assertion would probably be very true; but what would be the utility of it? As for myself, I cannot say with the gentleman just mentioned, that "I am not such a fool as I am generally supposed to be;" for I am persuaded that I have credit for quite as much sense as I actually

possess, and in many cases I have found that people think I have more knowledge than I really have. I have never undeceived them, and I never will: the only sentiment I feel on such occasions is a desire to justify their opinions. I think it is Mungo Park, who says, in his Travels, that he has suffered more than he will ever tell: like him I say, I am more ignorant than I will ever tell. He is a bungler indeed, who cannot, in this age of shallowness and skin-deep learning, travel through the world without exposing himself. There are a thousand royal roads to superficial knowledge. It does not require much to make a man's intellect passable: if he will only read the reviews, he will be very well qualified for general society. A German scholar reads about sixteen hours a day on an average; if an English gentleman will devote the same portion of time every month to learning, he may cut a very respectable figure. It is a shame, where knowledge is so cheap, that any man should confess that he has not a competent share of it. He may read both the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews for fourpence, and then he is qualified to talk with the learned of the land. To prevent yourself from exposing your ignorance is not, after all, a difficult task. Πολλακις ή γλώττη προτρέχει την διάνοιαν, says Isocrates, the tongue outstrips the judgment very often; if you are silent, nobody knows that you could not say something very much to the purpose. When Megabysus paid a visit to Apelles in his painting-room, he stood gazing on the pictures for some time without speaking, but at last he began to give his opinion on the painter's labours. Apelles could not brook this, and exclaimed, "While thou wast silent, I thought thee some extraordinary person by thy chain and thy rich habit; but now that we have heard thee speak, there is not the meanest boy in my shop that does not despise thee." Pythagoras enjoined silence to his disciples, not so much that they might acquire knowledge, for that is generally gained by free communication, but that they might not expose themselves by betraying their ignorance. May it not be the case that women in general are reputed to possess inferior intellects to men, merely because, by talking more than men, they more frequently display their deficiencies in knowledge? Lest the foundation of this argument should be denied, I beg leave to quote a passage or two from the late ingenious Doctor Currie, which clearly prove that women are of a more garrulous nature than men. "Female occupations," says he in his Life of Burns, "require much use of speech, because they are duties in detail. Besides, their occupations being generally sedentary, the respiration is left at liberty. Their nerves being more delicate, their sensibility as well as fancy is more lively; the consequence of which is a more frequent utterance of thought, a greater fluency of speech, and a distinct articulation at an

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