7th. I finished the eighteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Raisonnée. It contains the letters of Leibnitz. This universal genius here appears as a theologian. As a philosopher, could Leibnitz really hope that an union might be affected among religions? Vitæ Servii Sulpicii et P. Alpheni. The life of the first of these lawyers is as interesting, as that of the second is the reverse. It is written by Everard Otto. Heineccii Opuscula. Among these dissertations, that concerning the dress of the first Christians is learned and curious. Catonis Disticha. After having read the proofs brought by M. Carnegzieter, it is impossible to doubt that Dionysius Cato was a Pagan who lived before the age of Constantine. It was not necessary, surely, to be a Christian, to be able to retail in the lowest style, maxims of the plainest common

sense.

8th. I wrote two pages of my collection, and read over again the fourteenth Satire of Juvenal, v. 1-106.

9th. The first volume of the Letters of Baron Bielfeld having accidentally fallen into my hands, engaged and amused me. I was pleased with his description of Berlin, Potsdam, and Hanover. The life led by the King of Prussia, in his retreat, is well sketched. We behold the morning of a beautiful day; but as there are no presages of the tempest, the picture is a little too flattering. As to Homer and England, the baron is just as well acquainted with one as with the other.

13th. I finished the nineteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Raisonnée it contains the fourteenth and last extract from Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, translated by Courayer. The refined policy of the house of Austria has always known how to avail itself of that superstition of which other nations have been the victims. Austria in particular rejected the authority of the Council of Trent, which she had appeared to admit most respectfully. Cæsar's Commentaries, by Oudendorp: a good and bulky edition. Thoughts and Theological Dissertations, by Alphonso Turretin a weak reasoner, but a good writer. The Miracles of the Abbé Paris, by Montgeron. This fanaticism of the Jansenists is one of those epidemic maladies of the human mind, which deserves much attention.

16th. I had a little neglected Juvenal. To-day I read for the second time, the fourteenth Satire, v. 106-331, the end; and, for the first time, the fifteenth Satire, v. 1-174. There are satires more agreeable than the fourteenth; there are others in which the poet takes a loftier flight; but there are none in which he so much displays his genius for philosophy, the art of connecting his ideas, his precision, and brevity. His brevity resembles not that so common among writers of the present age, who often strangle a thought in hopes of strengthening it; and who applaud their own skill, when they have shown to us, in a few absurd words, the fourth part of an idea; it is the brevity of Tacitus and Montesquieu, which after retrenching whatever is superfluous or unnecessary, includes the principal thought in a precise and vigorous expression. By

selecting the most characteristic circumstances, the poet sets before your eyes, in five lines, (v. 166-171,) the simplicity of the ancient Romans, their love of labour, their domestic happiness, the fruitfulness of their wives, their sober diet, and their aversion to being served by a multitude of foreign slaves. Throughout the whole of this satire, the texture is skilfully combined; the thoughts either rising immediately the one from the other, or the transitions being so natural, that they are almost imperceptible. How justly and artfully does the poet describe the progress of avarice in the human heart? tracing it from its origin, in sordid parsimony, to mean contrivances for gain; and from thence to injustice, violence, and the greatest crimes. The father who first inspired into his son this miserable passion, vainly struggles to check his flagitious career; and after being long the astonished spectator of his crimes, sometimes becomes their victim.

Trepidumque magistrum

In caveâ maguo fremitu, leo tollet alumnus;

is an image equally bold and impressive. This master of the lion had exasperated his natural ferocity, in order to render him more deserving the attention of the amphitheatre.

17th. I read the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal, v. 1-174, the second time; and also read the sixteenth and last Satire. In the first of these Juvenal expresses, undisguised, his hatred against the Egyptian nation and religion. This does not at all surprise me. As a man of good sense, Juvenal despised the absurdities of this worship; he saw how much its introduction into Rome had corrupted the morals of his fellow citizens; and perceived that those crowded assemblies, in which the distinctions of age, rank, and sex, were concealed and confounded, under the veil of night and mystery, opened a door to the most abominable debauchery, at the same time that the Egyptian prophets and fortune-tellers taught women and children to calculate, and sometimes to hasten, the deaths of their fathers and husbands. His own banishment into a country which was the object of his contempt or detestation, naturally sharpened his animosity, and carried his resentment to the utmost pitch. I only wish that he had restrained it within the bounds of justice. In a tumult excited by superstition, the Egyptians devoured the flesh of one of their fallen enemies. From this horrid action it was not fair to conclude, that the Egyptians equalled in barbarity the Cyclops and the Lestrigons. The French treated with equal barbarity Marechal d'Ancre, and the Dutch Pensionary de Witt. The fixed and permanent character of a people ought never to be inferred from moments of madness and fury. The poet also too much indulges his talent for declamation. Instead of aggravating the crime of the Egyptians, he in reality lessens it by his unseasonable reasonings, example of the Vascones, &c. He who violates the principles of Zeno may be worthy of blame; but the monster who insults the dictates of nature can alone excite horror. The genius of our poet is clearly displayed in the witty description of the worship which

the Egyptians paid to animals; * in the origin of society, founded on those principles of benevolence, which are implanted by nature in the heart of man only; † and in that dreadful, though beautiful picture of the ferocity of an Egyptian.

The sixteenth Satire is not clearly proved to be Juvenal's. It is written weakly, and negligently; but I think we may recognise the master's hand in v. 55. This satire, however, is of considerable importance in history. It has not been sufficiently remarked to what extent the privileges of soldiers were carried under the emperors. In moments of sedition, it was manifest, they overturned the thrones; but it was not known that in time of peace they shared their sovereignty. I know not of a bolder enterprise, in any small portion of a community, than that of withdrawing itself from the jurisdiction of the ordinary magistrates, and insisting that its differences, even with the other classes of citizens, should be decided by its own judges. The clergy obtained these privileges in the dark ages; but such pretensions seem to have been more excusable in a body, which was believed to possess all the virtue, and which really possessed all the learning of the times, than they could possibly be in the Roman soldiers, whose ignorance, grossness of manners, des potic and military maxims, removed them to so great a distance from the character belonging to a judge.

I finished Juvenal, whom I regret not being earlier acquainted with; and who, in future, will be one of my favourite authors. Having written my observations on him, as they occurred in reading his satires, I have but little to add on the subject; and shall confine myself to two remarks: the first, as to the time in which he lived; the second, concerning his versification. 1. There is not any Latin poet concerning whom we have so little information; whether from pride or modesty, he has neglected to tell us either the time of his birth, or the circumstances of his life. None of his works were written in commemoration of any great event, which might have ascertained their date. It seems as if he had taken a pleasure in perplexing us, by often speaking of many persons as his contemporaries who lived at very different periods of time. There remain but a few words of an old life of Juvenal, written by an unknown author; which life augments our uncertainty, by its opposition to the clearest inferences from the poet's own works. According to that biographer and his scholiast, Juvenal lived under Nero, who banished him to Egypt, where he died soon afterwards. Yet it is certain that he survived Domitian; that he witnessed the condemnation of Marius Priscus; that Martial, who did not retire into Spain until the reign of Trajan, left him at Rome; and from the date of a consulship, there is reason to suspect, that he was in Egypt in the third year of the reign of Adrian. All the eras perfectly correspond with the system of the learned Dodwell, who thinks that our poet was banished by the last named emperor. Some time ago I read Dodwell's work, the Quintilian Annals. I have not the book

Sat. xv. v. 1-14.

+ Id. xv. v. 129-158.

at hand, and cannot recollect the proofs which he brings; but I can see several probabilities tending to support his opinion. 2. Juvenal's versification appears to me to be superior to that of most of the Latin poets. Managed by him, the Roman language loses all its roughness. His verses are flowing, harmonious, and animated; although he never sacrifices the sense to the sound. I should fancy that the lines flowed spontaneously from his pen, did I not perceive, amidst a multitude of fine ones, some few that are disgusting, by their rudeness or their languor. To have allowed them to pass uncorrected, a poet must have been extremely inattentive to his versification; since they might have been mended so easily. I remark also, that his poetry is more sparing of ornament in his last satires. If they are placed in chronological order, this difference may be easily accounted for.

As the Satire of Sulpitia, on the banishment of the philosophers, is printed with the Satires of Juvenal, I had an inclination to examine it; and therefore read it twice over, v. 1-70. The praises bestowed by Martial had prepossessed me in favour of this lady; but, in my opinion, those praises were not her due. Her genius, perhaps, was too feeble to support her in this lofty flight; but was better adapted to subjects that required only taste, spirit, and sensibility. The epigrammatist, perhaps, had as little delicacy in his praise as in his satire; and was carelessly prodigal of his flattery to a woman of fashion, whose house was the resort of men of letters. 1. The work is without method or plan; and the beauty of the subject is destroyed by her manner of treating it. Instead of lamenting that the throne of ignorance should be established on the ruins of philosophy and the arts, twenty-three lines of a poem consisting of seventy, are consumed in an invocation and conclusion, which inform us of nothing, except that Sulpitia was a woman of great vanity and affectation; and were it not for eight verses casually inserted in the middle of the satire,* I should not be able to guess its subject, as I still am at a loss to discover the meaning and use of the digression, where she examines whether prosperity or adversity were most useful to the republic. 2. As to the style and poetry, it is the misfortune of Sulpitia, that she has not left room for criticising faults that proceed from genius or fancy. Her work is characterised by coldness, hardness, poverty of invention, rudeness of harmony, and a versification that gratifies neither the ear nor the mind. 3. Women have been accused of want of precision. In this respect Sulpitia does not belie her sex. Without mentioning that she confounds science with wisdom, as if those two things had never been distinguished, I shall only give an example of the most incongruous and absurd simile that I ever remember to have met with. philosophers banished by Domitian are compared with the Gauls expelled by Camillus. It is needless to point out the absurdity of comparing a body of men of letters with a nation of barbarians, and a legal banishment with the defeat of an army; and Sulpitia ought to have remembered that the Gauls had burnt the city,

*Bello secunda secundo.

The

besieged the Capitol, and that their conqueror, Camillus, merited the title of second founder of Rome. 4. Justice, however, must be done to Sulpitia. Her satire is adorned by one striking image. Rome, after all her victories, is represented under the figure of the wrestler Milo, who remained alone in the lists, vainly expecting an antagonist. This image is happily conceived; and clearly, though not forcibly, expressed.

17th. I this day began the description of ancient Rome, by Fabiano Nardini, translated into Latin by Tollius, and inserted in the fourth volume of Grævius's Roman Antiquities, which Mr. Pavillard borrowed for me from the public library of Geneva. This work is much valued by the learned; though I perceive that the Abbé Langlet du Fresnoy speaks lightly of its translation. I read lib. i. cap. i. ii. p. 881-897. Nardini vindicates the account commonly given of the origin of Rome, by arguments very generally known. This is the subject of the first chapter. The second is very interesting, since it examines the extent of the first city, built by Romulus, which comprehended only the Palatine Mount; and when the Sabines took the capitol, this meant the citadel.

18th. I read Nardini, lib. i. cap. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. p. 897-945, which terminates the first book. A variety of subjects are treated with great learning, considerable judgment, and a minute accuracy, which is commonly instructive, but sometimes tiresome. Having finished his description of the city built by Romulus, he examines the addition made to it by Tatius, the ally of that king, on the Capitoline Hill; and then proceeds to consider the form given to it by Servius Tullius, (the least celebrated, but perhaps the greatest of all its legislators,) and the wall which bounded the extent of Rome to the reign of Aurelian. This wall he traces with great attention, directed by an exact local knowledge. It results from the whole of his observations, that the circuit of ancient Rome was scarcely so considerable as that of the modern: a fact which totally overturns the systems of Lipsius and Vossius. Nardini is very happy in explaining the famous passage of Pliny, which treats of the twelve gates; and which ought not to be reckoned more, since we learn from two passages of Cicero and Livy, that several of the Roman gates had two arches called Jani, which are still distinguishable on ancient monuments. Nardini is not equally successful in explaining the Pomorium. In spite of all his hypotheses, there are still three propositions on this subject, which rest on equally good authority, and are yet contradictory to each other. 1. That the Pomorium was a consecrated slip of ground on both sides of the walls. 2. That the walls of Rome had the same extent from Servius Tullius to Aurelian. 3. That Sylla, Julius Caesar, and the emperor Claudius extended the Pomorium.

I this day finished the twentieth volume of the Bibliothèque Raisonnée; which contains the translation of Diodorus Siculus, by the Abbé Terasson. It is remarkable that a man who despised the finest writings of antiquity, should have condescended to become the translator of an historian, whose accidental utility far surpasses