that lie at a great distance from one another in the original history.

Let us now give some few sketches of what is improving in the book.

The very introduction is worth while to be mention'd; the author therein makes judicious and fine reflections on history and hiftorical Wri

ters.

Hiftorical knowledge, fays he, with a good heart, a clear head, and fome acquaintance with the present state of things, fits a man out for the world. It lets him far into the œconomy of providence, teaches him fubmiffion to her difpenfations, and warms his breaft with the moft generous paffions for his fellow creatures. It clears his mind of the rubbish thrown into it from craft and fuperftition, and ftrengthens and adorns it with abundance of found and beautiful ideas. It gives him a full view of human nature, and a very distinct one of himfelf. It fortifies with caution, furnishes addrefs, and makes him an artift in the bufinefs of life. A man who takes every thing by the right handle, and bears himfelf gracefully in the midft even of his miffortunes: Such a man difcerns the genius of every Nation, and the compafs of reafoning and action allotted to each. Such a man fees the whole fcale of human nature from her lowest to her highest virtues and vices. ; from ignorance and the glimmerings of fenfe, to all the fplendors of wit and learning. Such a man fees the Phantafms of happiness with which mankind and every humour is bewitch'd. Such a man fees diftinctly the Furies in thofe paffions and exceffes that fhatter and diftract the world. Such a man fees that Viciffitude is a Law of human nature; that it extends to every nation, to every family,

family, and to every individual perfon: That vice and ignorance have very often the benefit of Virtue and Knowledge, and that the evil is not always difpens'd either in favour of fenfe or Virtue. Such a man has his cure for every fcene of life, and for every genius and temper he meets with. Such a man once more, fees human nature through and through, and the vanity of earthly fruitions.

These are the advantages that our Author juftly afcribes to thofe, who with a good talent and reflection, are well read in the hiftory of the world.

But to this he oppofes the Ignes Fatui, call'd Lies, which ever prefent themselves in our purfuit of Hiftorical Truth, and ever, without the cautions of experience in the chafe, lead a man a long round-about dance over hedge and ditch, and betray him into a thousand dangers before he perceives the delufion.

Thefe Meteors, as he calls them, flow from the Ignorance, the Knavery, and the Conftituti ons of writers. There is, adds he, as much wantonness and malice, as much falfhood and de fign, as much ignorance and ill-breeding in hi、 ftory, as in ordinary converfation; and men generally bring their conftitutions equally into the one and the other.

Upon the Ignorance and Knavery of writers. he paffes by, as a truth known to every one; but he enlarges upon the Conftitutions of authors, which conftitutions he divides into the Melancholick, the Phlegmatick, the Cholerick, and the Sanguine tempers.

His manner of proving according to thefe four heads, how truth may be injur'd, being a D 3

fort

fort of a new discovery, it will not be amifs to fpeak of it, and thus he argues :

'Tis no difficult matter to fhew, that the constitution of a man frequently betrays him into a falfhood. The man of a Melancholick temperament, for example, frequently takes and reports fhadows for fubftances, and airy fufpicions for the best grounded truths in the world.

The Sanguine makes every thing he likes appear infinitely better than it is:

While the Cholerick makes every thing he likes not, appear infinitely worse. The Phlegmatick is indeed excellent at the outside of things, but good for nothing at the infide. He gives you a most exact account of Fact, but is strangely fhort-fighted at the Reafon of it, and fees but little of the Good or Evil of any thing.

He must never fet up for difcernment, who has liv'd any confiderable time in the world, and not discovered his variations from himself merely by virtue of alterations in his fluids. Every man who reflects thoroughly on himself, finds that his ideas of perfons and things often alter, without the intervention of the smallest reafon concerning them. His idea of a thing at noon, he often finds to be unlike his idea of it in the morning; and his idea of it at night, to be unlike 'em both; and this merely by the force of his alter'd fluids. Vexatious apprehenfions are often remov'd by a generous meal; and dangers become contemptible after a bottle, that appear'd terrible before it: Hence fome make it a rule, and 'tis methinks a very good one, never to ask a favour in a morning, if they can have an opportunity of doing it immediately after dinner. A good repaft fweetens all nature in a man, lets in the fun as it were upon his facul

ties; his heart is enlarg'd; his ideas are brighten'd, and then or never he is in a difpofition to confer a favour.

I cannot help thinking that Solon in his fam'd faying, Tv auTór, Know thy felf, had his eye in a particular manner upon the temperament of the body, without the knowledge of which, I cannot fee how any man can properly be faid to know himself. The influence of the body upon the mind can hardly be fuppos'd to have efcap'd that difcerning philofopher: And if he faw it, he faw too that a great part of the human happiness depended upon the good government of the body. The conftitution of a man, before he knows and has learned to manage it, I may venture to fay, is his greate deceiver: It clouds his mind when he has occafion for her utmost brightness: It betrays him into falfe ideas of men and things: It makes him feel pain where there is no difeafe, and fee terrors where there are no dangers: This we call the Spleen. In a moift air, or in rainy weather, his humours rife, and his fpirits fink, his mind languishes, his ideas fade, and he falls into an opinion, that those perfons and things, which gave him but now perhaps a most reasonable delight. have little or nothing delightful or agreeable in 'em. When the fun fhines out, and drys up the vapours in the air, his fpirits are difincumber'd, his ideas revive, he banishes his whimfies contracted in the rain, and enjoys his former opiniIn rainy weather, dangers that were few, become numerous in his eyes; difficulties that were fmall, become unfurmountable; things that displease him give redoubled offence, and things that fright him, as much terror. The cafe

ons.

is the fame after a debauch; and for this I appeal to every man's experience.

Where the Melancholick humour, or, as the phyficians term it, the Atra Bilis was the afcendent, the mind is involv'd in darkness and terror; while the imagination of a Sanguine man may be faid to resemble a fpacious area open to all the beams of the fun. The imagination of the Melancholick can be compared to nothing perhaps fo properly, as a difmal cell from which the day is for ever excluded, and where burns only a fingle taper. Sir Theod. Mayerne fays, Melancholiam, Sedem, Balneum & Regnum Diaboli effe, fat fcio, atque Principem iftum Tenebrarum, fub atri bumoris denfa Caligine latitantem fe Je variis morbis naturalibus immifcere, & fævas excitare turbas in diverfis fubjectis, experientia multiplici compertum habeo. That is, I am fatiffied that melancholy is the feat, the bath, and the kingdom of the devil; and have found by manifold experience, that that prince of darkness, concealing himself under the thick mift of the melancholick bumour, has a band in various natural difeafes, and stirs up cruel diforders on fundry occafions. I know nothing of the devil's having any thing to do with the melancholick humour; but this I know, that the melancholick humour, where it abounds, makes, if my reader will pardon me the expreffion, the devil of an hiftorian. He deals in omens, apparitions, and haunted houses, in battel, murder, and fudden death. His pages fwell with fins, judgments, and catastrophes. His ftile is the plaintive, thick fet with interjections, as Ab! the Alas! and the Ob me! He dwells for ever on the dark fide of things, and knows not how to exhibit them on the bright. He mourns for evils that never were.

He finds