THE ENGLISH REVIEW, For FEBRUARY, 1786. ART. I. Sylva; or, the Wood: Being a Collection of Anecdotes, Differtations, Characters, Apophthegms, Original Letters, Bons Mots, and other Little Things. By a Society of the Learned. 8vo. 5s. Boards. Payne. London, 1786. ONE NE of the peculiar inventions of modern literature has been the mifcellany. The writers of antiquity affixed a confiderable degree of weight and importance to the character of an author. They never affumed it without a seriousness and deliberation, at least equal to that of a clergyman entering mto holy orders; and they uniformly looked forward to pofterity. Accordingly every particular volume was dedicated to a particular fubject; and a confiderable deviation from the point in hand was regarded, as an equal infringement of the laws of rhetoric, and the laws of decorum. But it has fince been difcovered, and fortunate, in many respects, has the difcovery been found, that much inftruction may be conveyed under the guise of indolence; and that the mass of mankind are never more furely to be allured by the leffons of wisdom, than when the professed object is fimple amufement. It is this that has diffused literature through a vaft multitude of men; and philofophy, no longer confined to the colleges of the learned, and the cabinets of the curious, enlifts, under its various denominations, every man of a rank fuperior to the herdfman and the artisan. Some of the firft fruits of this difcovery, among ourselves, we find in the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian. These papers have undoubtedly been of infinite fervice in ciENG.REV. Vol. VI. Feb. 1786. vilizing F vilizing and informing the inhabitants of the island. But fo far as the authors of them fondly looked forward to immortality, they were certainly mistaken. The pofitive and literal deftruction of a book, the copies of which have been univerfally diffufed, is indeed difficult; but the fame and honour of thefe papers, as compofitions, are rapidly declining. They were fucceeded, in the fame form, by the Rambler, which, leaving the example of Addison and Steele, ranks with performances of the most elevated name. The writers of the Spectator marked their airy footsteps in the fand; and, however beautiful the traces might appear, are unable to defy the roarings of the wind, and the tempefts of the element. Johnson, on the other hand, under the fhape of feuilles volantes, prefents us with an accuracy and extent of obfervation, and a depth and folidity of reafoning, that clafs his publication with a Bacon, and a Locke, a Shaftesbury and a Hume. Various has been the nature, and various the fuccefs, of the imitations with which thefe illuftrious examples have loaded the prefs. For fome time their authors have not ventured to give them in fingle papers, but their number has not been diminished by this circumftance. The mifcarriage of fome late attempts of this kind, had taught us to feel a kind of unpleafant fenfation in opening fubfequent mifcellanies. The writer of Sylva, however, has contrived to diffipate our prejudice; and we acknowledge in him a friend, agreeable, amusing, and inftructive. That the reader may form fome judgment of the entertainment he is to expect, we will present him with the following paper on "conferring and receiving favours." 46 Socrates, though importuned, refufed to go to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. Seneca, who has recorded the fact, fays that his oftenfible reafon was, not to receive favours which he could not return,"-nolle fe ad eum venire, a quo acciperet beneficia, cum reddere illi paria non poffet: his real one, "not to go into voluntary fervitude," noluit ire ad voluntariam fervitutem *. The real one, certainly for Archelaus was a bad prince; and courts are not places of freedom and independence, even under good ones -Befides, the former reafon would, I fhould think, have been unworthy of Socrates. What! is no man to receive a benefit, but who is able to return it? If fo, then (as Ariftotle makes him reply upon this occafion, but furely unphilofophically)" it must be as great an affront to confer a benefit upon a perfon who cannot return it, as to injure a person who cannot redress him/elf t:" and then all acts of kindness, generofity, and charity, muit be banished from among men; fince one party is no more at liberty to confer, than the other to receive, a favour. *De Benefic, V. 6. Rhetor. II. 23. • How How is it, I wonder, that we hear fo many exclaiming loudly against receiving favours? "I think nothing fo dear as what is given me," fays Montaigne;" and that, because my will lies at pawn under the title of ingratitude. I more willingly accept of offices to be fold; being of opinion, that for the laft I give nothing but money, but for the first I give myfelf:" as if, according to ancient language, to receive a favour was to fell our liberty,- beneficium accipere eft libertatem vendere. It may be fo in fome cafes, and with fome perfons; and I fhall fo far compromife the matter with Montaigne, that we ought to be careful, and perhaps fomewhat nice, from whom we receive favours. But to lay down the propofition univerfally, and with respect to all manner of perfons; to fpurn the very idea of receiving a favour from, or being obliged to, any one; to think and reason, as if fervices conferred and received ought, like other trading commodities, to be weighed as in a fcale; to keep an account as of creditor and debtor; and to dread a balance against us as much, as if lofs of liberty and imprisonment were the confequence all this is. wretched: 'tis all faftidious hauteur, pride, infolence; denoting a fpirit and temper certainly unchriftian, but unphilofophical alfo, and impolitic in the highest degree. And why? because it would greatly weaken, if not deftroy, all that mutual affection, all that intercourfe of kindness and good offices, fo, by nature, neceffary to the helpless, dependent ftate of man, and fo contributing (if not effential) to his happiness in fociety.' Certainly there is much good fenfe, and found morality, in thefe obfervations. Our author has properly expofed that mean prejudice, and idle French philofophy, which, first tracing all our affections and actions to the fource of felf-love, has been afterwards defirous of teaching us, that refined selfishness is the perfection of human nature. What is offered on the fubject of "great effects from caufes apparently small," is fcarcely lefs ingenious. Somebody hath called Swift's Drapier's Letters, "the brazen monuments of his fame:" alluding, 1 fhould fuppofe, to the effect they produced, rather than to any thing extraordinary in their compofition. They are written, as Swift ufually wrote, with abilities and address; but they were far from being the cause of the effect that fol lowed. The truth is, and we have Swift himself confeffing it, that "the fuccefs of the Drapier's Letters was not owing to his abilities, but to a lucky juncture, when the fuel was ready for the first hand that would be at the pains of kindling it." Letters.-The royal commentator upon Machiavel's prince, if indeed his majesty of Prussia be the author of that comment, makes the change of Queen Anne's miniftry, and the confequent peace with Lewis XIV. to be caused by a difpute between the Queen and the Duchefs of Marlborough about a pair of gloves. Chap. 25.It might be fo; but it must have been, juft as the scratch of a pin upon the cuticle may be the cause of Effais III. 9. a mortification, where the conftitutional habit is very bad.-I would not fay, therefore, in this and the former inftance, that the Drapier's Letters and gloves were the causes, but that they occafioned caufes, already provided, to begin to operate in producing their effects: which is what fhould properly be meant, when great effects are said to proceed from caufes apparently small. If the idea, in this cafe, be not perfectly new, it is, however, well worth our attention. It fhews us how important ą ftudy is the fcience of human nature, and how much depth and philofophy go to the forming an excellent hiftorian. Voltaire is undoubtedly an agreeable writer. He has well investigated the characters of particular men, and the spirit of particular periods. But, examined by this rule, his commendation will not be great. His hiftories are rather epigrammatic than ethical, and continually facrifice the character of the investigator and the instructor, to that of the man of wit and the general fatyrift. One other paffage we will extract from this volume, not fo much from any remarkable merit it poffeffes, as from the importance of the fact it relates. It is not meant that the magiftrate fhould ever dispense with law, or act against it; but only that he fhould, as far as he can, temper it with lenity and forbearance, when the letter is found to run counter to the fpirit. For inftance; our ancient Saxon laws nominally punished theft with death, when the thing ftolen exceeded the value of twelve pence: yet the criminal was permitted to redeem his life with money. But, by 9 Hen. I. in 1109, this power of redemp tion was taken away: the law continues in force to this very day; and death is the punishment of a man who iteals above twelve-pennyworth of goods, although the value of twelve pence now is near forty times lefs than when the law was made. Here the fpirit is abfolutely outraged by the letter: and, therefore, might not a juftice, when a delinquent of this fort is brought, endeavour to foften the rigour of this law; or rather to evade it, by depreciating the value of the thing ftolen; by fuffering the matter to be compromifed between the parties; and, where the character of the offender will admit of it, inftead of pursuing the feverities of juftice, by tempering the whole procedure with mercy? This, and fuch like modes of acting, may be faid, indeed, to be ftraining points; but, unless fuch points be ftrained occafionally, magiftrates must often act, not only against the fpirit of the laws, but against the dictates of reason, and the feelings of their own hearts. Sir Henry Spelman took occafion, from this law, to complain, that "while every thing elfe was rifen in its va lue, and become dearer, the life of man had continually grown cheaper *." Fortefcue has a remarkable paffage concerning this law. "The civil law," fays he, "where a theft is manifeft, adjudged the crimi * Gloffar, in voce Laricinium. nal hal to restore fourfold; for a theft not fo manifeft, twofold: but the laws of England, in either cafe, punish the party with death, provided the thing ftolen exceeds the value of twelvee-pence But, is not this comparison between civil and English law astonishingly made by a man, who was writing an apology for the latter against the forfer? What is it nothing to fettle a proportion between crimes and punishments? and fhall one man, who fteals an utenfil worth thirteen-pence, be deemed an equal offender against fociety, and fuffer the fame punishment, with another, who plunders a house, and murders all the family?' Sylva is introduced to our notice by a pompous preface, in which the writer pathetically exclaims against the multitude of publications that teem from the prefs; and then proceeds, We would make our book, if we could, the beauties of know. ledge, wit, and wifdom; felected from all indifcriminately who can furnish them, and brought more clofely and compendiously together. For the great object of our work is to make men wifer, without obliging them to turn over folios and quartos † ; to furnish matter for thinking, instead of reading.' In the title page too, the volume is pretended to proceed from a fociety of the learned, whom we naturally represent to ourfelves as each of them furnishing his voluntary contribution. This is all quackery and impertinence. Sylva does not, in reality, affume a graver form, or tend more to generate thinking, than every good book that ever was published of the fame fize and the fame variety. And the work, if we have any difcernment in ftyles, is all the production of one hand. So much fo, that the effays which are given us from a book intitled, The Irenarch of Dr. Heathcote," if Dr. Heathcote have a real exiftence, and be not, like the Slawkenber gius of Sterne, the mere creature of the writer's imagination, are fufficient to prove that the author of Sylva is no other than Dr. Heathcote himself. His work, however, is, in one fenfe, a collection, as it is interfperfed with anecdotes and bons mots, fome good and fome indifferent, fome new and fome trite. ** De Laud. Leg. Angliæ, c. 46. La multiplicité des faits, &c. " the multiplicity of facts and writings," fays Voltaire," is become fo great, that every thing must foon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries." In Cat. Henaut.-In. ftead of this, we are got altogether into the other extreme: far from contracting and abridging, we enlarge and expatiate beyond all bounds; as if quantity, not quality, were the point to be attained. Let the fubject be politics, belles lettres, tafte, morals, or what you will have we not quarto piled upon quarto, till the heap grows as huge as Pelion upon Offa To |