།་་་། suspicious birth of his daughter Juanna, placed the crown on the head of Isabella, his sister. The marriage of that princess with Ferdinand of Arragon completed the salutary revolution. The Spaniards celebrate, with reason, the united administration of those monarchs: the manly virtues of Isabella, and the profound policy of Ferdinand the Catholic, always covered with the veil of religion, though often repugnant to the principles of justice. After a ten years' war, they executed the great object of delivering Spain from the infidels. The Moors of Grenada defended that last possession with obstinate valour, and stipulated, by their capitulation, the free exercise of the Mahometan religion. Public faith, gratitude, and policy ought to have maintained this treaty; and it is a reproach to the memory of the great Ximenes that he urged his masters to violate it. The severe persecutions of the Mahometans, and the expulsion of many thousands of Jewish families, inflicted a deep but secret wound on Spain, in the midst of its glory. The prosperity of Ferdinand and Isabella was embittered by the death of their only son. Their daughter Juanna married the Archduke Philip, (son of the Emperor Maximilian and of Mary of Burgundy), and the great successions of the houses of Austria, of Arragon, and of Castile, were gradually accumulated on the head of Charles V., the fortunate offspring of that marriage. The dominion of Spain was extended into a new hemisphere, which had never yet been visited by the nations placed on our side of the planet. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, obtained from the ministers of Isabella, after long solicitations and frequent repulses, three small barks and ninety men, with which he trusted himself to the unknown Atlantic. His timid and ignorant sailors repeatedly exclaimed, that he was carrying them beyond the appointed limits of nature, whence they could never return. Columbus resisted their clamours, and at the end of thirty-three days from the Canaries, showed them the island of Hispaniola, abounding in gold, and inhabited by a gentle race of men. In his subsequent voyages, undertaken with a more considerable force, he discovered many other islands, and saw the great continent of America, of whose existence he was already convinced from speculation. The discoveries of Columbus were the effort of genius and courage; those of the Portuguese, the slow effect of time and industry. They sailed round the continent of Africa; found, by the Cape of Good Hope, a new and more independent route to the East Indies, and soon diverted the commerce of the east from Alexandria and Venice to Lisbon. A new world was opened to the studious as well as to the active part of mankind. It was scarcely possible for the Italians to read Virgil and Cicero, without a desire of being acquainted with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes. Their wishes were gratified by the assistance of many learned Greeks, who fled from the Turkish arms. The manuscripts which they had saved, or which were discovered in old libraries, were quickly diffused and multiplied by the useful invention of printing, which so much facilitated the acquisition of knowledge. For some time, however, the genius of the Italians seemed overpowered by this sudden accession of learning. Instead of exercising their own reason, they acquiesced in that of the ancients; instead of transfusing into their native tongue the taste and spirit of the classics, they copied, with the most awkward servility, the language and ideas suited to an age so different from their own. If we turn from letters to religion, the Christian must grieve, and the philosopher will smile. By a propensity natural to man, the multitude had easily relapsed into the grossest polytheism. The existence of a Supreme Being was indeed acknowledged; his mysterious attributes were minutely, and even indecently, canvassed in the schools; but he was allowed a very small share in the public worship, or the administration of the universe. The devotion of the people was directed to the Saints and the Virgin Mary, the delegates, and almost the partners, of his authority. From the extremities of Christendom thousands of pilgrims, laden with rich offerings, crowded to the temples and statues the most celebrated for their miraculous powers. New legends and new practices of superstition were daily invented by the interested diligence of the mendicant friars; and as this religion had scarcely any connexion with morality, every sin was expiated by penance, and every penance indulgently commuted into a fine. The popes, bishops, and rich abbots, careless of the public esteem, were soldiers, statesmen, and men of pleasure; yet even such dignified ecclesiastics blushed at the grosser vices of their inferior clergy. ESSAY ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. The following is in French, in Mr. Gibbon's handwriting, on the back of the title-page of his own interleaved copy. My friends made me publish this work, so to speak, in spite of myself. This hackneyed excuse of authors is not, however, such with me. My father wished me to publish it last winter. My youth, and a considerable stock of vanity, which renders me more sensitive to criticism than to praise, prevented me from acceding to his design. But being in the country with him in the month of March, he renewed his request in so pressing a manner, that I could not avoid it. Mr. Mallet introduced me to a bookseller named Becket, to whom I gave up my manuscript, agreeing for forty copies for myself.-Mr. Maty corrected the sheets. The printing of the work, which was commenced at the beginning of May, was not finished till the end of June, and my book was not published till towards the middle of the following month. Mr. Mallet took charge of the distribution of the greatest part of those which I wished to give as presents. The following is extracted from a letter he wrote me on the 9th of June, 1761 : S S "Dear Sir, I have executed the orders you gave me, and all the books have been delivered some days. Lord Chesterfield returns you his thanks, I expect, in writing, and have had Lady Harvey's in that manner. Lord Hardwicke, with his compliments for the book to himself, assured me he would send the other to his son, and recommend you to his acquaintance. Lord Egremont will be glad to know you, if ever you should think of a journey to Augsburg. I found Lord Granville reading you, after ten at night; his single approbation, which he assures you of, will go for more than that of a hundred other readers. I have gone further, in sending one copy to the Count de Caylus, another to the Duchess d'Aiguillon, and in giving a third to M. de Bussy." TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. Dear Sir,-No performance is, in my opinion, more contemptible than a dedication of the common sort; when some great man is presented with a book, which, if science be the subject, he is incapable of understanding; if polite literature, incapable of tasting: and this honour is done him as a reward for virtues which he neither does nor desires to possess. I know but two kinds of dedications which can do honour either to the patron or author. The first is, when an unexperienced writer addresses himself to a master of the art, in which he endeavours to excel; whose example he is ambitious of imitating; by whose advice he has been directed; or whose approbation he is anxious to deserve. The other sort is yet more honourable. It is dictated by the heart, and offered to some person who is dear to us, because he ought to be so. It is an opportunity we embrace with pleasure of making public those sentiments of esteem, of friendship, of gratitude, or of all together, which we really feel, and which therefore we desire should be known. I hope, dear sir, my past conduct will easily lead you to discover to what principle you should attribute this epistle; which, if it surprises, will, I hope, not displease you. If I am capable of producing any thing worthy the attention of the public, it is to you that I owe it; to that truly paternal care which, from the first dawnings of my reason, has always watched over my education, and afforded me every opportunity of improvement. Permit me here to express my grateful sense of your tenderness to me, and to assure you, that the study of my whole life shall be to acquit myself, in some measure, of ob ligations I can never fully repay. I am, dear sir, with the sincerest affection and regard, May the 28th, 1761. ADDRESS TO THE READER. It is indeed an essay which I now wish to be acquainted with myself. bring to the light. I should My own prepossessions and those of my friends would have inspired me with ideas too favourable towards it, had not my Apollo,* that secret voice which I cannot silence, often forewarned me to distrust their praises. Ought I to confine myself to receiving with gratitude the benefits conferred by those who have gone before me? Can I hope to add any thing to the common treasury of truths, or at least of ideas? I will endeavour to listen to the sentence of the public, and I shall hear it only to submit; without philippics against my times, without appeal to posterity. The desire of vindicating a favourite study, that is, self-love a little disguised, gave rise to the following reflections. I wished to free an estimable science from the contempt under which it now languishes. It is true that the ancients are still read, but they are no longer studied. They are not looked at with that attention and that preparation of learning, which Cicero and Bossuet require of their readers. There are still persons of taste, but there are no literati; and those who know that literary men can forego pecuniary recompenses more easily than public esteem, will not be surprised at this. This is, I repeat it, an essay; what is now to be read is not a finished treatise. I have contemplated literature under a few points which have particularly struck me. Several have, no doubt, escaped me; others I have neglected. I have not all entered on the vast field of the fine arts, of the beauties they borrow from literature, and of those they afford it. Why am I not a Caylus or a Spence ?+ Then would I raise an eternal monument to their alliance. In it should be seen the image of Jupiter developing itself in Homer's brain, and coming to lie beneath the chisel of Phidias. But I cannot, with Correggio, say to myself" I, too, am a painter." After having for two years kept back this little work, the amusement of my leisure in the country, I at last venture to lay it before the public. I need its indulgence both for the matter and the language. My youth gives me a just claim for the one, and my being a foreigner renders the other exceedingly necessary. April 16th, 1761. LETTER TO THE AUTHOR. I received, my dear sir, the sheets of your work, just wet from the press. The feeling which induced you to communicate them to me, has entered deeply into my heart. Ask not for my opinion again; it cannot but be partial. But will the public have the eyes of a friend? Will this trial of your strength, this happy germ of more considerable works, be favourably received? Will it be spared? How natural this anxiety -Cynthius aurem Vellit et admonuit. Author of a work called Polymetis, in which the mythology of the poets is combined with that of the sculptors. This work, full of taste and learning, deserves to be better known in France. It will be recollected that the Essay was entirely a French work. to a young author. It is to him an honour, to him only is it allowed. God forbid that you should for a long time lose that valuable mistrust of public approbation, which will place you in a condition to deserve it. If ever, when a practised writer, you take less pains, it will be because you know your judges better, and fear them less. Would I deprive the young beauty the blush of that modesty which makes her distrust the value of her charms, and which will cease only when they are no more? No, sir, I do not seek to remove your fears; I enjoy your alarms; your judges are about to appear; arm yourself with intrepidity. Can you believe that a man born to assist at the tumultuous meetings of parliament, and to destroy the foxes in his county, will be pardoned for discussing what was thought, two thousand years ago, about the divinities of Greece, and the early ages of Rome? What, not the least allusion to what is passing in our own days? A pamphlet treating neither of war nor commerce, where no boundaries are prescribed, no reduction proposed, no compliment paid to the prince, no lesson given to his ministers! Truly I wonder at you; and what, I ask, will be said about it in Hampshire? Greek ought to be left to colleges and to plebeians. So have they decided among our neighbours, and the fashion threatens to become contagious. I know that Paris does not yet think herself disgraced by a Caylus and a Nivernois, and that your own island counts up with pleasure her Lyttletons, her Marchmonts, her Orrerys, her Baths, and her Granvilles. But you are young, and those whom I have now mentioned are suspected rather to belong to a past age. Your remarks are learned; but who can read them at Newmarket, or in Arthur's coffee-house? "There is neither order nor connexion in it," says the offended mathematician. Do not be surprised, he will consider you a deserter. You have not awarded the apple to his Venus, and he judges of a work of taste, on the footing of Euclid's Elements. Among your critics, I see the literary man himself. I will not say that you think, and leave to him the trouble of compiling. My respect for you is too great to allow me to filch this witticism from Voltaire. But your observations do not consist of corrections of passages. What verse of Aristophanes have you restored? On what manuscript do you rely? Besides, you look at some objects under a new or singular point of view. Your chronology is Newton's; you justify Virgil's anachronism; your gods are not *****'s. Tremble at his new edition; you will have a place in his notes. I will not reproach you with the obscurity, shall I say, or the profundity of some of your thoughts, your abbreviated sentences, your bold figures. The Academic nation will be less merciful, and will ridicule any one who would apply to you one of your own remarks, and the modest avowal of the Roman orator, when reading over, at a mature age, a much applauded production of his youth."Quantis illa clamoribus, adolescentuli," (he was six and twenty)" diximus de supplicio parricidarum! quæ nequaquam satis deferbuisse post aliquanto sentire cœpimus......Sunt enim omnia, sicut adolescen |