These reasons therefore, as they make nothing against his being an atheist, so they prove nothing of his believing one God; but only leave him as they found him, and leave us in as great an obscurity concerning his religion as before. I may be as much mistaken in my opinion as these great men have been before me; and this is very probable, because I know less of him than they; yet I have read him over more than once, and therefore will presume to say, that I think him either one of the Eclectic44 school, or else a Sceptic: I mean, that he either formed a body of philosophy for his own use out of the opinions and dogmas of several heathen philosophers, disagreeing amongst themselves, or that he doubted of every thing; weighed all opinions, and adhered to none of them; only used them as they served his occasion for the present dialogue, and perhaps rejected them in the next. And indeed this last opinion is the more probable of the two, if we consider the genius of the man, whose image we may clearly see in the glass which he holds before us of his writings, which reflects him to our sight.

Not to dwell on examples, with which his works are amply furnished, I will only mention two. In one, Socrates convinces his friend Chærephon of the power of the gods in transformations, and of a supreme Providence which accompanies that power in the administration of the world. In another, he confutes Jupiter, and pulls him down from heaven to earth, by his own Homerical chain; and makes him only a subservient slave to blind eternal fate. I might add, that he is, in one half of his book, a Stoic, in the other an Epicurean; never constant to himself in any scheme of divinity, unless it be in despising his gentile gods. And this derision, as it shews the man himself, so it gives us an idea of the age in which he lived; for if that had been devout or ignorant, his scoffing humour would either have been restrained, or had not passed unpunished; all knowing ages being naturally sceptic, and not at all bigotted; which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper character of our own.

To conclude this article: He was too fantastical, too giddy, too irresolute, either to be any thing at all, or any thing long; and in this view I cannot think he was either a steady atheist, or a deist, but a doubter, a sceptic, as he plainly declares himself to be, when he puts himself under the name of Hermotimus the Stoic, in the dialogue called the “Dialogue of the Sects.”

As for his morals, they are spoken of as variously as his opinions. Some are for decrying him more than he deserves; his defenders themselves dare not set him up for a pattern of severe virtue. No man is so profligate, as openly to profess vice; and therefore it is no wonder, if under the reign of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines, of which the last was his patron and benefactor, he lived not so much a libertine as he had it to be in his nature. He is more accused for his love of boys than of women. Not that we have any particular story to convince us of this detestable passion in him; but his own writings bear this record against him, that he speaks often of it, and I know not that ever he condemns it. Repeated expressions, as well as repeated actions, witness some secret pleasure in the deed, or at least some secret inclination to it. He seems to insinuate, in his “Dialogue of Loves,” that Socrates was given to this vice; but we find not that he blames him for it, which, if he had been wholly innocent himself, it became a philosopher to have done. But as we pass over a foul way as hastily as we can, so I will leave this abominable subject, which strikes me with horror when I name it.

If there be any who are guilty of this sin, we may assure ourselves they will never stop at any other; for when they have overleaped the bounds of nature, they run so fast to all other immoralities, that the grace of God, without a miracle, can never overtake them.

Lucian is accused likewise for his writing too lusciously in his “Dialogue of the Harlots.”45 It has been the common fault of all satirists, to make vice too amiable, while they expose it; but of all men living, I am the most unfit to accuse Lucian, who am so little able to defend myself from the same objection. We find not, however, that Lucian was charged with the wantonness of his “Dialogues” in his own life-time. If he had been, he would certainly have answered for himself, as he did to those who accused him for exposing Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, and other great philosophers, to the laughter of the people, when Jupiter sold them by an inch of candle. But, to confess the truth, [as] I am of their opinion, who think that answer of his not over-ingenuous, viz. that he only attacked the false philosophers of their sects, in their persons whom he honoured; so I am persuaded, that he could not have alleged more in his excuse for these “Dialogues,” than that as he taught harlots to deceive, so, at the same time, he discovered their deceits to the knowledge of young men, and thereby warned them to avoid the snare.

I find him not charged with any other faults, than what I have already mentioned. He was otherwise of a life as unblameable as any man, for aught we find to the contrary: and I have this probable inducement to believe it, because he had so honourable an employment under Marcus Aurelius, an emperor as clear-sighted as he was truly virtuous; for both which qualities we need not quote Lucian, who was so much obliged to him, but may securely appeal to Herodian, and to all the historians who have written of him, – besides the testimony of his own admirable works, which are yet in the hands of all the learned.

As for those who condemn our author for the too much gall and virulency of his satires, it is to be suspected, says Dr Mayne, that they themselves are guilty of those hypocrisies, crimes, and follies, which he so sharply exposes, and at the same time endeavours to reform. I may add, that, for the most part, he rather laughs like Horace, than bites like Juvenal. Indeed his genius was of kin to both, but more nearly related to the former. Some diseases are curable by lenitives; to others corrosives are necessary. Can a man inveigh too sharply against the cruelty of tyrants, the pride and vanity of the great, the covetousness of the rich, the baseness of the Sophists, and particularly of the Cynics, (who while they preach poverty to others, are heaping up riches, and living in gluttony,) besides the wrangling of the sects amongst themselves about supreme happiness, which he describes at a drunken feast, and calls it the battle of the Lapithæ.

Excepting what already is excepted, he seems to me to be an enemy to nothing but to vice and folly. The pictures which he draws of Nigrinus and of Demonax are as fair as that of virtue herself, if, as the philosopher said, she could wear a body. And if we oppose to them the lives of Alexander the false prophet, and of Peregrinus, how pleasingly, and with how much profit, does the deformity of the last set off the beauty of the first!

Some of his censurers accuse him of flatness and want of wit in many places. These I suppose have read him in some Latin translations, which I confess, are generally dull; and this is the only excuse I can make for them. Otherwise they accuse themselves too manifestly for want of taste or understanding. Of this number is the wretched author of the Lucien en Belle Humeur, who being himself as insipid as a Dutch poet, yet arraigns Lucian for his own fault; introduces the ghost of Ablancourt, confessing his coldness in many places, the poorness of his thoughts, and his want of humour; represents his readers tired and yawning at his ill buffoonery and false mirth, and sleeping over his melancholic stories, which are every where stuffed with improbabilities. He could have said no worse of a Leyden slip.46

The best on it is, the jaundice is only in his own eyes, which makes Lucian look yellow to him. All mankind will exclaim against him for preaching this doctrine; and be of opinion when they read his Lucian, that he looked in a glass when he drew his picture. I wish I had the liberty to lash this frog-land wit as he deserves; but when a speech is not seconded in parliament, it falls of course; and this author has the whole senate of the learned to pull him down: incipient omnes pro Cicerone loqui.

It is to be acknowledged, that his best translator, Ablancourt, thinks him not a profound master in any sort of philosophy; but only that he skimmed enough from every sect, to serve his turn in rhetoric, which was his profession. This he gathers from his superficial way of arguing. But why may not another man reply in his defence, that he made choice of those kinds of reasons which were most capable of being made to shine in his facetious way of arguing; and those undoubtedly were not the most knotty, nor the deepest, but the most diverting by the sharpness of the raillery. Dr Mayne, so often praised, has another opinion of Lucian’s learning, and the strength of his witty arguments, concluding on that subject in these words, or near them: “For my part, I know not to whose writings we owe more our Christianity, where the true God has succeeded a multitude of false, – whether to the grave confutation of Clemens Alexandrinus, Arnobius, Justin Martyr, St. Augustin, Lactantius, &c. or the facetious wit of Lucian.” – I cannot doubt but the treacherous translator would have given his hand to what the Englishman has said of their common author. The success has justified his opinion in the sight of all the world. Lucian’s manner of convincing, was certainly more pleasant than that of the Christian writers, and we know the effect was full as powerful; so easily can the Eternal Wisdom draw good out of evil, and make his enemy subservient to the establishment of his faith.

I will not enlarge on the praises of his oratory. If we compare his style with the Greek historians, his contemporaries, or near his time, we shall find it much more pure than that of Plutarch, Dion, or Appian, though not so grave; because his subjects and theirs required to be treated after a different manner. It was not of an uniform web, says Mayne, like Thucydides, Polybius, and some others whom he names, but was somewhat peculiar to himself; his words well chosen, his periods round, the parts of his sentences harmoniously divided, a full flood or even a torrent of persuasion, without inequalities or swellings; such as might be put in equal comparison with the best orations of Demosthenes or Isocrates; not so dry as the first, nor so flowery as the last. His wit, says Ablancourt, was full of urbanity, that attic salt, which the French call, fine raillery; not obscene, not gross, not rude, but facetious, well mannered, and well bred: only he will not allow his love the quality last mentioned, but thinks it rustical, and according either to his own genius, or that of the age in which he lived.

If wit consists in the propriety of thoughts and words, (which I imagined I had first found out, but since am pleasingly convinced that Aristotle has made the same definition in other terms,) then Lucian’s thoughts and words are always proper to his characters and his subject. If the pleasure arising from comedy and satire be either laughter, or some nobler sort of delight, which is above it, no man is so great a master of irony as our author. That figure is not only a keen, but a shining weapon in his hand; it glitters in the eyes of those it kills; his own gods, his greatest enemies, are not butchered by him, but fairly slain: they must acknowledge the hero in the stroke, and take the comfort which Virgil gives to a dying captain:

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Mr Malone observes, that, according to Antony Wood, (Ath. Oxon. ii. 423.) this was not said of Waller, but by that poet, of Sir John Denham. – “In the latter end of the year 1641, Sir John published the tragedy called the ‘Sophy,’ which took extremely much, and was admired by all ingenious men, particularly by Edmund Waller of Beaconsfield, who then said of the author, that he broke out, like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, before any body was aware, or the least suspected it.” Mr Malone adds, that the observation is more applicable to Denham than to Waller; for Denham, from the age of sixteen, when he went to Trinity College, in Oxford, November 18, 1631, to the time of his father’s death, January 6, 1638-9, was considered as a dull and dissipated young man; whereas Waller distinguished himself, as a poet, before he was eighteen. Besides, the “Sophy” was published just when the Irish rebellion broke out.

In one passage of the Dialogue, our author’s version of the sixth satire of Juvenal is mentioned with commendation; and in another, the tragedy of “Aureng-Zebe” is quoted.

St Evremont wrote “Observations on Segrais’ Translation of Virgil.”

– “He at Philippi keptHis sword even like a dancer; —– he aloneDealt on lieutenancy, and no practice hadIn the brave squares of war.”Antony and Cleopatra.

A tragedy by Racine. St Evremont, in a dissertation on this play, addressed to Madame Borneau, severely reprobates the fault so common in French tragedy, of making a play, though the scene is laid in ancient Rome or India, centre and turn upon Parisian manners. He concludes, that Corneille is the only author of the nation that displays a true taste for antiquity.

The full title is, “The History of Polybius the Megalopolitan; containing a general Account of the Transactions of the World, and principally of the Roman People during the first and second Punic Wars. Translated by Sir H.S. To which is added a Character of Polybius and his Writings, by Mr Dryden, 1693.”

Where he enumerates the translators of Lucian in the Supplement to his Life.

Vol. VIII. p. 203.

“History of Polybius, the five first bookes entire, with all the parcels of subsequent bookes unto the eighteenth, according to the Greeke original. Also, the manner of the Romane encamping. Translated into English, by Edward Grimestone, sergeant at armes.” London, 1634. Folio.

From these expressions, one would suppose Sir Henry Shere to have been a seaman, which may also be conjectured from his writing an “Essay on the certainty and causes of the Earth’s Motion on its Axis;” and a “Discourse concerning the Mediterranean Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar;” the one published in 1698, the other in 1705. The naval and military professions were, however, formerly accounted less absolutely distinct branches of service than at present. Many officers distinguished themselves in both. Mr Malone may therefore be right in conjecturing Sir Henry Shere to have been a soldier, though his studies would argue him a seaman or engineer.

Polybii Lycortæ F. Megalopolites Historiarum Libri, qui supersunt, Gr. Lat. Isaacus Casaubonus, ex antiquis libris emendavit, Lat. vertit et commentariis illustravit. Accessit Æneæ vetustissimi Tactici commentarius de toleranda obsidione. Isaaeus Casaubonus primus vulgavit, Latinam interpretationem ac notas adjecit. Parisiis, 1609, Folio.

“The fame of Nicholas the Fifth, (who sat in the papal chair from 1447 to 1455,) has not,” says Mr Gibbon, —Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vi. 429, 4to.) “been adequate to his merits. From a plebeian origin, he raised himself, by his virtue and learning. The character of the man prevailed over the interests of the pope; and he sharpened those weapons, which were soon pointed against the Roman church. He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age; he became their patron; and such was the humility of his manners, that the change was scarcely discernible, either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of a liberal gift, it was not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and when modest merit declined his bounty, ‘Accept it,’ would he say, with a consciousness of his own worth; ‘you will not always have a Nicholas among ye.’ The influence of the holy see pervaded Christendom; and he exerted that influence in the search, not of benefices, but of books. From the ruins of the Byzantine libraries, from the darkest monasteries of Germany and Britain, he collected the dusty manuscripts of the writers of antiquity; and wherever the original could not be removed, a faithful copy was transcribed, and transmitted for his use. The Vatican, the old repository for bulls and legends, for superstition and forgery, was daily replenished with more precious furniture; and such was the industry of Nicholas, that, in a reign of eight years, he formed a library of five thousand volumes. To his munificence, the Latin world was indebted for the versions of Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian; of Strabo’s Geography; of the Iliad; of the most valuable works of Plato and Aristotle; of Ptolemy and Theophrastus; and of the fathers of the Greek church. The example of the Roman pontiff was preceded, or imitated, by a Florentine merchant, who governed the republic without arms, and without a title. Cosmo, of Medicis, was the father of a line of princes, whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning. His credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was imported in the same vessel. The genius and education of his grandson, Lorenzo, rendered him not only a patron, but a judge and candidate in the literary race. In his palace, distress was entitled to relief, and merit to reward. His leisure hours were delightfully spent in the Platonic academy; he encouraged the emulation of Demetrius Chalcocondyles and Angelo Politian; and his active missionary, Janus Lascaris, returned from the East with a treasure of two hundred manuscripts, fourscore of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. The rest of Italy was animated by a similar spirit, and the progress of the nation repaid the liberality of the princes. The Latins held the exclusive property of their own literature; and these disciples of Greece were soon capable of transmitting and improving the lessons which they had imbibed. After a short succession of foreign teachers, the tide of emigration subsided; but the language of Constantinople was spread beyond the Alps; and the natives of France, Germany, and England, imparted to their country the sacred fire which they had kindled in the schools of Florence and Rome.”

Our author recollected the following panegyric on Pope Nicholas, in the Dedication of Casaubon’s edition of Polybius, to Henry IV. of France:

“Quum enim a pluribus retro sæculis, in principum animis, toto Occidente, amor politioris literaturæ et Græci sermonis excoluisset; accidit non sine numine profecto, ut circa illa ipsa tempora Byzantinæ cladis, et paullo ante, summi in Europa viri et principes generossissimi hunc veternum ceu virgula divina tacti, opportune excuterent, et ad bene merendum de studiis politioribus et de linguis, ardore incredibili accenderentur. Prima terrarum Italia ad hanc palmam occupandam, è diuturno torpore tunc demum expergefacta, sese concitavit, et nationibus aliis per Europam, exemplum quod imitarentur præbuit. In ipsa verò Italia, ad certamen adeo gloriosum, Nicolaus Quintus Pontifex Maximus, in cujus extrema tempora Byzantini imperii eversio incidit, princeps, quod equidem sciam, signum sustulit. Nam et literarum dicitur fuisse intelligentissimus; et, quod res arguit, earum amore erat flagrantissimus. Primus hic, illa ætate, libros antiquorum scriptorum sedulo conquirere curæ habuit; magnamque earum copiam in Vaticanam intulit; primus cum assiduis hortatibus, tum ingentibus etiam propositis præmiis, ad meliorem literaturam è tenebris oblivionis in lucem revocandam, homines Italos stimulavit: primus, Græcæ linguæ auctores omnis sincerioris doctrinæ esse promos condos qui uon ignoraret, ut Latino sermone exprimerentur, vehementissime optavit, et efficere contendit.”

That is, the first five books.

Polybius, the historian, was born at Megalopolis, in Arcadia, in the fourth year of the 143d Olympiad, about 205 years before the Christian æra. Being carried to Rome as an hostage, he became the companion and friend of the younger Scipio Africanus; accompanied him in his campaigns; and is said to have witnessed the destruction of Carthage, in the 158th Olympiad. Having returned to his native country, he died in the 164th Olympiad, 124 years before Christ, in consequence of a fall from his horse.

The history of Polybius embraced the space from the first year of the 140th to the first of the 153d Olympiad, being fifty-three years.

Nicolo Peretti published a Latin version of the first five books of Polybius, at Rome, in 1473, folio. The first Greek edition appeared in 1530; the second at Basle, in 1549. The last is most esteemed.

“Plutarch tells us, that Brutus was thus employed the day before the battle of Pharsalia. ‘It was the middle of summer; the heats were intense, the marshy situation of the camp disagreeable, and his tent-bearers were long in coming. Nevertheless, though extremely harassed and fatigued, he did not anoint himself till noon; and then taking a morsel of bread, while others were at rest, or musing on the event of the ensuing day, he employed himself till the evening in writing an epitome of Polybius.” – Malone.

With a thousand of his countrymen, whom the Romans ordered thither as hostages, after the conquest of Macedonia.

A. U. C. 608.

A. U. C. 607.

The word and renders this passage ungrammatical. – Malone.

Mr Malone justly conjectures, that Dryden here thought of his old master James II., whose economy bordered on penury, and whose claims of prerogative approached to tyranny.

Philip de Commines, author of the excellent Memoirs of his own time. He was born in Flanders, and was for several years a distinguished ornament of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his native sovereign; but was tempted to divert his service for that of Louis XI. by whom he was employed in several negociations. After the death of that monarch, Commines fell into disgrace with his successor, and was long detained in prison: he died in 1509. It was of this historian Catherine de Medicis was wont to say, “that he made as many heretics in the state, as Luther in the Church.”

In the year of Rome 568.

I believe the most enthusiastic admirers of Livy must tire of these unvaried prodigies. Et bos locutus occurs as often, and is mentioned with as much indifference, as a nomination of sheriffs in Hall, Stowe, or Speed.

See Vol. XIII. p. 68. where our author, in his “Essay on Satire,” controverts keenly the position of Casaubon.

In his thirty-eight year, forty-three being the legal age.

The elegant translator, however, gives us no information on that subject; his preface being principally a panegyric upon good discipline, which, without much risque of contradiction, he affirms to be the “substance and sum total of military science.”

Thomas Stanley’s “History of Philosophy,” &c. was published in folio, in detached parts, between 1655 and 1660; and reprinted entire in 1687.

A. D. 375. Rufinus was chief prefect of the East. The person here alluded to was only count of fifteen provinces. Dryden, writing from memory, confounded the offices of the murderer and murdered. See the next note.

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