Ease Conveniency Elegancy Magnificence are sought in Building first and then in furnishing Houses or Palaces The admirable imitations of Nature are introduced by Pictures Statues Tapestry and other such Atchievements of Arts. And the most exquisite delights of Sense are pursued in the Contrivance and Plantations of Gardens which with Fruits Flowers Shades Fountains and the Musick of Birds that frequent such happy places seem to furnish all the pleasures of the several Senses and with the greatest or at least the most natural Perfections Thus the first Race of Assyrian Kings after the Conquest of Ninus and Semiramis passed their Lives till their Empire fell to the Medes Thus the Caliphs of Egypt till deposed by their Mamalukes Thus passed the latter parts of those great Lives of Scipio Lucullus Augustus Dioclesian Thus turned the great Thoughts of Henry the Second of France after the end of his Wars with Spain Thus the present King of Morocco after having subdued all his Competitors passes His Life in a Country Villa gives Audience in a Grove of Orange-trees planted among purling Streams And thus the King of France after all the Successes of His Counsels or Arms and in the mighty Elevation of His present Greatness and Power when He gives Himself leasure from such Designs or Pursuits passes the softer and easier parts of His time in Country Houses and Gardens in building planting or adorning the Scenes or in the common Sports and Entertainments of such kind of Lives And those mighty Emperors who contented not themselves with these Pleasures of common Humanity fell into the Frantick or the Extra vagant they pretended to be Gods or turned to be Devils as Caligula and Nero and too many others known enough in Story Whilst Mankind is thus generally buside or amused that part of them who have had either the Justice or the Luck to pass in common Opinion for the wisest and best part among them have followed another and very different Sent and instead of the common designs of satisfying their Appetites and their Passions and making endless Provisions for both they have chosen what they thought a nearer and a surer way to the ease and felicity of Life by endeavouring to subdue or at least to temper their Passions and reduce their Appetites to what Nature seems only to ask and to need And this design seems to have brought Philosophy into the World at least that which is termed Moral and appears to have an end not only desirable by every Man which is the Ease and Happiness of Life but also in some degree suitable to the force and reach of humane Nature For as to that part of Philosophy which is called Natural I know no end it can have but that of either busying a Man's Brains to no purpose or satisfying the Vanity so natural to most Men of distinguishing themselves by some way or other from those that seem their Equals in Birth and the common advantages of it and whether this distinction be made by Wealth or Power or appearance of Knowledg which gains Esteem and Applause in the World is all a case More than this I know no Advantage Mankind has gained by the progress of Natural Philosophy during so many Ages it has had Vogue in the World excepting always and very justly what we owe to the Mathematicks which is in a manner all that seems valuable among the Civilized Nations more than those we call Barbarous whether they are so or no or more so than our selves How ancient this Natural Philosophy has been in the World is hard to know for we find frequent mention of ancient Philosophers in this kind among the most ancient now extant with us The first who found out the Vanity of it seems to have been Solomon of which Discovery he has left such admirable strains in Ecclesiastes The next was Socrates who made it the business of His Life to explode it and introduce that which we call Moral in its place to busie Human Minds to better purpose And indeed whoever reads with Thought what these two and Marcus Antoninus have said upon the Vanity of all that mortal Man can ever attain to know of Nature in its Originals or Operations may save Himself a great deal of Pains and justly conclude That the Knowledg of such things is not our Game and like the pursuit of a Stag by a little Spaniel may serve to amuse and to weary us but will never be hunted down Yet I think those Three I have named may justly pass for the wisest Triumvirate that are left us upon the Records of Story or of Time After Socrates who left nothing in writing many Sects of Philosophers began to spread in Greece who entred boldly upon both parts of Natural and Moral Philosophy The first with the greatest Disagreement and the most eager Contention that could be upon the greatest Subjects As Whether the World were Eternal or produced at some certain time Whether if produced it was by some eternal Mind and to some end or by the fortuitous Concourse of Atoms or some Particles of Eternal Matter Whether there was one World or many Whether the Soul of Man was a part of some Aethereal and Eternal Substance or was Corporeal Whether if Eternal it was so before it came into the Body or only after it went out There were the same Contentions about the Motions of the Heavens the Magnitude of the Celestial Bodies the Faculties of the Mind and the Judgment of the Senses But all the different Schemes of Nature that have been drawn of old or of late by Plato Aristotle Epicurus Des-Cartes Hobs or any other that I know of seem to agree but in one thing which is The want of Demonstration or Satisfaction to any thinking and unpossessed Man and seem more or less probable one than another according to the Wit and Eloquence of the Authors and Advocates that raise or defend them like Juglers Tricks that have more or less appearance of being real according to the dextrousness and skill of Him that plays 'em whereas perhaps if we were capable of knowing Truth and Nature these fine Schemes would prove like Rover Shots some nearer and some further off but all at great distance from the Mark it may be none in sight Yet in the midst of these and many other such Disputes and Contentions in their Natural Philosophy they seemed to agree much better in their Moral and upon their Enquires after the Ultimate End of Man which was His Happiness their Contentions or Differences seemed to be rather in Words than in the Sense of their Opinions or in the true meaning of their several Authors or Masters of their Sects All concluded that Happiness was the Chief Good and ought to be the Ultimate End of Man that as this was the end of Wisdom so Wisdom was the way to Happiness The Question then was in what this Happiness consisted The Contention grew warmest between the Stoicks and Epicureans the
pierced by those two famous Rivers of the Nile and the Niger to produce a Race of Men that seem hardly of the same Species with the rest of Mankind Yet I can not find any Traces of that Heroick Virtue that may entitle them to any share in this Essay For whatever remains in Story of Atlas or His Kingdom of old is so obscured with Age or Fables that it may go along with those of the Atlantick Islands tho I know not whether these themselves were by Solon or Plato intended for Fables or no or for Relations they had met with among the Egyptian Priests and which perhaps were by them otherwise esteemed SECT II. THE Great and Ancient Kingdom of China is bounded to the East and South by the Ocean to the North by a Stone Wall of twelve Hundred Miles long raised against the Invasion of the Tartars and to the West by vast and unpassible Mountains or Desarts which the Labour or Curiosity of no mortal Man has been ever yet known to have pierced thro or given any account of When Alexander would have passed the River Ganges He was told by the Indians that nothing beyond it was inhabited and that all was either impassible Marishes lying between great Rivers or sandy Desarts or steep Mountains full only of Wild Beasts but wholly destitute of Mankind So as Ganges was esteemed by Ancients the Bound of the Eastern World Since the use of the Compass and extent of Navigation it is found that there are several populous Kingdoms lie between Ganges and the Desarts or Mountains that divide them from China as Pegu Siam Cirote and others lie in this space coasting along the Borders of Great Rivers Northwards which are said to run about the length of Indus and Ganges and all of them to rise from one mighty Lake in the Mountains of Tartary But from none of these Kingdoms is known any other way of Passage or Commerce into China than by Sea From Indostan or the Mogul's Country there is none other usual and such as travel from thence by Land are forced to go many Degrees Northward before they turn to the East to pass many Savage Kingdoms or Countries of the Tartars to travel through vast sandy Desarts and other prodigious high and steep Mountains where no Carriage or Beast is able to pass but only Men on foot and over one Mountain particularly esteemed the highest in the World where the Air is so thin that Men cannot travel over it without danger of their Lives and never in Summer without being poysoned by the Scent of certain Herbs that grow upon it which is mortal when they are in Flower After eight or nine Months Journey from the Mogul's Court several Persons have travelled this Way till they came to the Wall that defends or divides China from Tartary and so to the Imperial City of Peking situate in the Northern parts of this mighty Region which the Chinese call a World by it self and esteem themselves the only reasonable and civilized People having no Neighbours on three sides and to the North only the Tartars whom they esteem but another sort of wild or bruitish Men and therefore they say in common Proverb That the Chineses only see with two Eyes and all other Men but with one By this Situation and by a Custom or Law very ancient among them of suffering no Stranger to come into their Country or if they do not permitting Him to go out or return any more to His own this vast Continent continued very long and wholly unknown to the rest of the World and for as much as I can find was first discovered to us by Paulus Venetus who about four hundred years ago made a Voyage from Venice thro' Armenia Persia and several parts of Tartary to that which He names the Kingdom of Cataya and to the famous City of Cambalu as he calls them and after seventeen years residence of His Father and Himself in that Court of the great Cham returned to Venice and left the World a large Account of this Voyage Since His time and within two or three hundred years several Missionary Friers and Jesuits have upon Devotion or Command of their Superiors pierced with infinite pains and dangers thro' these vast and savage Regions some from the Mogul's Country some thro' Armenia and Persia and arrived at Peking which I make no question by comparing all their several Accounts and Relations is the same famous City that is called Cambalu by Paulus Venetus seated in the Northern Provinces of China which is by Him called Cataya The reason of this difference in Names was that when Paulus Venetus was there the Cham of East Tartary called Cataya had possessed Himself by Conquest of several Northern Provinces of China as well as that of Peking where He made His Residence and which was like the rest of His Empire called Cataya and the chief City Cambalu by a Tartar Name After some time all these Provinces were again recovered by the Chineses from the Tartars and returned to their old Chinese Appellations and the King of China who then expelled the Tartars fixed the Seat of His Empire at Peking which had been formerly at Nanking and at Quinsay that the Force of His Armies lying thereabouts might be ready to defend that Frontier against the furious Invasions of the Tartars whereof they had several times felt the rage and danger After this recovery China continued in Peace and prosperous under their own Emperors till about the year 1616 when the Tartars again invaded them and after a long and bloody War of above thirty years in the end made themselves absolute Masters of the whole Kingdom and so it has ever since continued This Region commonly known by the name of China extends about eighteen hundred Miles or thirty Degrees of Northern and Southern Latitude It is not esteemed so much of Longitude but this is more uncertain the Journey thro' the whole Country from East to West having not that I find been ever performed by any European and the accounts taken only from report of the Natives Nor is it easily agreed where the habitable parts of China determine Westward since some Authors say they end in Mountains stored only with wild Beasts and wild Men that have neither Laws nor Language nor other commerce with the Chineses than by descents sometimes made upon them for Rapines or for Rapes And other Authors say There are such inaccessible Mountains even in the midst of China so as the first accounts may have left out great Countries beyond these Mountains which they took for the utmost Border of this Kingdom Whatever length it has which by none is esteemed less than twelve or thirteen hundred miles It must be allowed to be the greatest richest and most populous Kingdom now known in the World and will perhaps be found to owe its Riches Force Civility and Felicity to the admirable constitution of it's Government more than any other This
Empire consists of fifteen several Kingdoms which at least have been so of old tho now governed as Provinces by their several Vice-roys who yet live in Greatness Splendor and Riches equal to great and Sovereign Kings In the whole Kingdom are one hundred and forty five capital Cities of mighty extent and magnificent Building and one thousand three hundred twenty and one lesser Cities but all walled round The number of Villages is infinite and no Country in the known World so full of Inhabitants nor so improved by Agriculture by infinite growth of numerous Commodities by Canals of incredible length conjunctions of Rivers convenience of Ways for the transportation of all sorts of Goods and Commodities from one Province to another so as no Country has so great trade tho till very lately they never had any but among themselves and what there is now foreign among them is not driven by the Chineses going out of their Country to manage it but only by their permission of the Portugueses and Dutch to come and trade in some skirts of their Southern Provinces For Testimonies of their Greatness I shall only add what is agreed of their famous Wall and of their City Peking The Stone-wall which divides the Northern parts of China from Tartary is reckoned by some twelve by others nine hundred miles long running over Rocks and Hills through Marishes and Deserts and making way for Rivers by mighty Arches It is forty five foot high and twenty foot thick at the bottom divided at certain spaces by great Towers It was built above two thousand years ago but with such admirable Architecture that where some Gaps have not been broken down by the Tartars upon their Irruptions the rest is still as intire as when it was first built The King that raised this Wall appointed a Million of Soldiers who were listed and paid for the defence of it against the Tartars and took their turns by certain numbers at certain times for the guard of this Frontier The Imperial City of Peking is nothing so large as several other Cities of China whereof Nanking is esteemed the greatest but is a regular Four-Square the Wall of each side is six Miles in length In each of these sides are three Gates and on each side of each Gate are great Palaces or Forts for the Guards belonging to them which are a thousand Men to each Gate The Streets run quite cross with a thro View and Passage from each Gate to that which is over against it in the opposite side and these Streets are ranged full of stately Houses The Palace of the Emperor is three Miles in Compass consisting of three Courts one within the other whereof the last where the Emperor lodges is four hundred paces square The other two are filled with His Domesticks Officers and Guards to the number of sixteen thousand Persons Without these Courts are large and delicious Gardens many artificial Rocks and Hills Streams of Rivers drawn into several Canals faced with square Stone and the whole atchieved with such admirable Invention Cost and Workmanship that nothing ancient or modern seems to come near it and all served with such Magnificence order and Splendour that the Audience of a Foreign Ambassadour at Peking seems a sight as Great and Noble as one of the Triumphs at Rome As other Nations are usually distinguished into Noble and Plebeian so that of China may be distinguish'd into Learned and Illiterate The last makes up the Body or Mass of the People who are govern'd the first comprehends all the Magistrates that govern and those who may in time or course succeed them in the Magistracy for no other than the Learned are ever employed in the Government nor any in the greatest Charges that are not of those Ranks or Degrees of Learning that make them termed Sages or Philosophers or Doctors among them But to comprehend what this Government of China is and what the Persons employed in it there will be a necessity of knowing what their Learning is and how it makes them fit for Government very contrary to what ours in Europe is observed to do and the reason of such different effects from the same Cause The two great Heroes of the Chinese Nation were Fohu and Confuchu whose Memories have always continued among them Sacred and Adored Fohu lived about four thousand years ago and was the first Founder of their Kingdom the progress whereof has ever since continued upon their Records so clear that they are esteemed by the Missionary Jesuits unquestionable and infallible For after the Death of every King the Successor appoints certain Persons to write the Memorable Actions of His Predecessors Reign and of these an Epitome is afterwards drawn and entred into their Registers Fohu first reduced them from the common Original Lives of Mankind introduced Agriculture Wedlock distinction of Sexes by different Habits Laws and Orders of Government He invented Characters and left several short Tables or Writings of Astronomy or Observations of the Heavens of Morality of Physick and Political Government The Characters He used seem to have been parly strait Lines of different Lengths and distinguish'd by different points and partly Hieroglyphicks and these in time were followed by Characters of which each expressed one word In these several ways were for many Centuries composed many Books among the Chineses in many sorts of Learning especially Natural and Moral Philosophy Astronomy Astrology Physick and Agriculture Something above two thousand years ago lived Confuchu the most learned wise and vertuous of all the Chineses and for whom both the King and Magistrates in His own age and all of them in the Ages since seem to have had the greatest Deference that has any where been rendred to any Mortal Man He writ many Tracts and in them digested all the Learning of the Ancients even from the first Writing or Tables of Fohu at least all that He thought necessary or useful to Mankind in their personal civil or political Capacities which were then received and since prosecuted with so great Esteem and Veneration that none has questioned whatever He writ but admitted it as the truest and best Rules of Opinion and Life so that 't is enough in all Argument That Confuchu has said it Some time after lived a King who to raise a new Period of Time from His own Name and Reign endeavoured to abolish the Memory of all that had passed before Him and caused all Books to be burnt except those of Physick and Agriculture Out of this ruin to Learning escaped either by chance or some private Industry the Epitomes or Registers of the several successions of their Kings since Fohu and the works of Confuchu or at least a part of them which have lately in France been printed in the Latin Tongue with a learned Preface by some of the Missionary Jesuits under the Title of the Works of Confutius After the death of this Tyrannous and Ambitious King These Writings came abroad and being
of the East or West of the Greek or the Latin Churches both the Original and Progress of it have been easily observed and are more vulgarly known having been the Subject of many Modern Writers and several well-digested Histories or Relations and therefore I shall give but a very Summary Account of both About the year 600 or near it lived Mahomet a Man of mean Parentage and Condition illiterate but of great Spirit and subtil Wit like those of the Climate or Country where He was born or bred which was that part of Arabia called the Happy esteemed the loveliest and sweetest Region of the World and like those blessed Seats so finely painted by the Poet Quas neque concutiunt venti neque nubila nimbis Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether Contegit late diffuso lumine ridet He was Servant to a rich Merchant of this Country and after his Masters Death having Married his Widow came to be possessed of great Wealth and of a numerous Family Among others he had entertained in it a Sergian Monk or at least called by that Name whose vicious and libertine Dispositions of Life had made him leave his Inclosure and Profession but otherwise a Man of great Learning Mahomet was subject to Fits of an Epilepsie or Falling-Sickness and either by the Customs of that Clymat or the necessity of that Disease very temperate and abstaining from Wine but in the rest voluptuous and dissolute He was ashamed of his Disease and to disguise it from his Wife and Family pretended his Fits were Trances into which he was cast at certain times by God Almighty and in them instructed in his Will and His true Worship and Laws by which he would be served and that He was commanded to publish them to the World to teach them and see them obey'd About this Age all the Christian Provinces of the East were over-run with Arianism which however refined or disguised by its learned Professors and Advocates either denyed or undermined the Divinity of Christ and allowed only His Prophetical Office The Countries of Arabia and Aegypt were filled with great numbers of the scattered Jews who upon the last Destruction of their Country in Adrian's time had fled into these Provinces to avoid the Ruin and even Extinction which was threatned their Nation by that Emperor who after all the Desolations He made in Judea transported what He could of their remaining Numbers into Spain The rest of Arabia and Aegypt was inhabited by Gentiles who had little Sense left of their decayed and derided Idolatry and had turned their Thoughts and Lives to Luxury and Pleasure and to the desires and acquisition of Riches in order to those ends Mahomet to humour and comply with these three sorts of Men and by the assistance of the Monk his only Confident framed a Scheam of Religion he thought likely to take in or at least not to shock the common Opinions and dispositions of them all and yet most agreeable to his own Temper and Designs He professed one God Creator of the World and who govern'd all things in it That God had in ancient times sent Moses His first and great Prophet to give His Laws to Mankind but that they were neither received by the Gentiles nor obeyed by the Jews themselves to whom he was more peculiarly sent That this was the occasion of the Misfortunes and Captivities that so often befel them That in the later Ages He had sent Christ who was the Second Prophet and greater than Moses to preach His Laws and Observation of them in greater Purity but to do it with Gentleness Patience Humility which had found no better reception or success among Men than Moses had done That for this Reason God had now sent his lást and greatest Prophet Mahomet to publish his Laws and Commands with more Power to subdue those to them by Force and Violence who should not willingly receive them and for this end to establish a Kingdom upon Earth that should propagate this Divine Law and Worship throughout the World That as God had designed utter Ruin and Destruction to all that refused them so to those that professed and obeyed them He had given the Spoils and Possessions of His and their Enemies as a Reward in this Life and had provided a Paradice hereafter with all sensual enjoyments especially of beautiful Women new created for that purpose but with more Transcendent Degrees of Pleasure and Felicity to those that should dye in the pursuit and propagation of them thro' the rest of the World which should in time submit or be subdued under them These with with the severe Prohibition of drinking Wine and the Principle of Predestination were the first and chief Doctrines and Institutions of Mahomet and which were received with great Applause and much Confluence of Arians Jews and Gentiles in those Parts some contributing to the rise of his Kingdom by the Belief of his Divine Mission and Authority many by finding their chief Principles or Religious Opinions contained or allowed in them but most by their Voluptuousness and Luxury their Passions of Avarice Ambition and Revenge being thereby complyed with After his Fits or Trances he writ the many several Parts or Chapters of His Alchoran as newly inspired and dictated from Heaven and left in them that which to us and in its Translations looks like a wild Fanatick Rhapsody of his Visions or Dreams or rather of His Fantastical Imaginations and Inventions but has ever passed among all his Followers as a Book Sacred and Divine which shews the strange difference of Conceptions among Men. To be short this Contagion was so violent that it spread from Arabia into Aegypt and Syria and his Power increased with such a sudden Growth as well as his Doctrine that he lived to see them overspread both those Countries and a great part of Persia the Decline of the Old Roman Empire making easie way for the powerful ascent of this new Comet that appeared with such wonder and terrour in the World and with a flaming Sword made way where-ever it came or laid all desolate that opposed it Mahomet left two Branches of his Race or Succession which was in both esteemed Divine among his Mussulmans or Followers the one was continued in the Caliphs of Persia and to'ther of Aegypt and Arabia Both these under the common Appellation of Saracens made mighty and wonderful Progress the one to the East and th' other to the West The Roman Empire or rather the remainders of it seated at Constantinople and afterwards called the Greek was for some times past most cruelly infested and in many parts shaken to pieces by the Invasions or Incursions of many barbarous Northern Nations and thereby disabled from any vigorous opposition to this new and formidable Enemy Besides the Divisions among Christians made way for their Conquests and the great increase of Proselytes to this new Religion The Arians
any fair Records For these are agreed by the Missionary Jesuits to extend so far above Four Thousand Years and with such Appearance of clear and undeniable Testimonies that those Religious Men themselves rather than question their Truth by finding them contrary to the vulgar Chronology of the Scripture are content to have Recourse to that of the Septuagint and thereby to salve the Appearances in those Records of the Chineses Now though we have been deprived the Knowledge of what Course Learning may have held and to what heights it may have soared in that vast Region and during so great Antiquity of Time by reason of the Savage Ambition of one of their Kings who desirous to begin the Period of History from his own Reign ordered all Books to be burnt except those of Physick and Agriculture so that what we have remaining besides of that wise and ancient Nation is but what was either by chance or by private Industry rescued out of that publick Calamity among which were a Copy of the Records and Successions of the Crown yet it is observable and agreed that as the Opinions of the Learned among them are at present so they were anciently divided into two Sects whereof one held the Transmigration of Souls and the other the Eternity of Matter comparing the World to a great Mass of Metal out of which some Parts are continually made up into a thousand various Figures and after certain Periods melted down again into the same Mass. That there were many Volumes written of old in Natural Philosophy among them That near the Age of Socrates lived their Great and Renowned Confutius who began the same Design of reclaiming Men from the useless and endless Speculations of Nature to those of Morality But with this Difference that the Bent of the Grecian seemed to be chiefly upon the Happyness of private Men or Families but that of the Chinese upon the good Temperament and Felicity of such Kingdoms or Governments as that was and is known to have continued for several Thousands of Years and may be properly called a Government of Learned Men since no other are admitted into Charges of the State For my own Part I am much inclined to believe that in these Remote Regions not only Pythagoras learn't the first Principles both of his Natural and Moral Philosophy but that those of Democritus who Travelled into Aegypt Caldaea and India and whose Doctrins were after improved by Epicurus might have been derived from the same Fountains and that long before them both Lycurgus who likewise Travelled into India brought from thence also the Chief Principles of his Laws and Politicks so much Renowned in the World For whoever observes the Account already given of the Ancient Indian and Chinese Learning and Opinions will easily find among them the Seeds of all these Grecian Productions and Institutions As the Transmigration of Souls and the four Cardinal Vertues The long Silence enjoyned his Scholars and Propagation of their Doctrins by Tradition rather than Letters and Abstinence from all Meats that had Animal Life introduced by Pythagoras The Eternity of Matter with perpetual changes of Form the Indolence of Body and Tranquility of Mind by Epicurus And among those of Lycurgus the Care of Education from the Birth of Children the Austere Temperance of Diet the patient endurance of Toil and Pain the neglect or contempt of Life the use of Gold and Silver only in their Temples the Defence of Commerce with Strangers and several others by him established among the Spartans seem all to be wholly Indian and different from any Race or Vein of Thought and Imagination that have ever appeared in Greece either in that Age or any since It may look like a Paradox to deduce Learning from Regions accounted commonly so barbarous and rude And 't is true the generality of People were always so in those Eastern Countries and their lives wholly turned to Agriculture to Mechanicks or to Trades But this does not hinder particular Races or Successions of Men the design of whose thought and time was turned wholly to Learning and Knowledge from having been what they are represented and what they deserve to be esteemed since among the Gauls the Goths and the Peruvians themselves there have been such Races of Men under the Names of Druids Bards Amautas Runers and other barbarous Appellations Besides I know no Circumstances like to contribute more to the advancement of Knowledge and Learning among Men than exact Temperance in their Races great pureness of Air and equality of Clymate long Tranquility of Empire or Government And all these we may justly allow to those Eastern Regions more than any others we are acquainted with at least till the Conquests made by the Tartars upon both India and China in the later Centuries However it may be as Pardonable to derive some parts of Learning from thence as to go so far for the Game of Chess which some Curious and Learned Men have deduced from India into Europe by Two several Roads that is by Persia into Greece and by Arabia into Africk and Spain Thus much I thought might be allowed me to say for the giving some Idea of what those Sages or Learned Men were or may have been who were Ancients to those that are Ancients to us Now to observe what these have been is more easie and obvious The most ancient Grecians that we are at all acquainted with after Lycurgus who was certainly a great Philosopher as well as Law-giver were the Seven Sages Tho' the Court of Croesus is said to have been much resorted to by the Sophists of Greece in the happy beginnings of his Reign And some of these Seven seem to have brought most of the Sciences out of Aegypt and Phoenicia into Greece particularly those of Astronomy Astrology Geometry and Arithmetick These were soon followed by Pythagoras who seems to have introduced Natural and Moral Philosophy and by several of his Followers both in Greece and Italy But of all these there remains nothing in Writing now among us so that Hyppocrates Plato and Xenophon are the first Philosophers whose Works have escaped the Injuries of Time But that we may not conclude the first Writers we have of the Grecians were the first Learned or Wise among them We shall find upon enquiry that the more ancient Sages of Greece appear by the Characters remaining of them to have been much the greater Men. They were generally Princes or Law-givers of their Countries or at least offered and invited to be so either of their own or of others that desired them to frame or reform their several Institutions of Civil Government They were commonly excellent Poets and great Physicians they were so learned in Natural Philosophy that they foretold not only Eclipses in the Heavens but Earthquakes at Land and Storms at Sea great Drowths and great Plagues much Plenty or much Scarcity of certain sorts of Fruits or Grain not to mention the Magical Powers attributed to
propriety of Soyl suited to the kind of Tree that grows in it there is a great favour or dis-favour to its growth from accidents of Water and of Shelter from the kindness or unkindness of Seasons till it be past the need or the danger of them All these and perhaps many others joyned with the propitiousness of Clymat to that sort of Tree and the length of Age it shall stand and grow may produce an Oak a Fig or a Plane-tree that shall deserve to be renowned in Story and shall not perhaps be parallelled in other Countries or Times May not the same have happened in the production growth and size of Wit and Genius in the World or in some Parts or Ages of it and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it than what may concur to the stupendious growth of a Tree or Animal May there not have been in Greece or Italy of old such prodigies of Invention and Learning in Philosophy Mathematicks Physick Oratory Poetry that none has ever since approached them as well as there were in Painting Statuary Architecture and yet their unparallelled and inimitable excellencies in these are undisputed Science and Arts have run their circles and had their periods in the several Parts of the World They are generally agreed to have held their course from East to West to have begun in Chaldaea and Aegypt to have been Transplanted from thence to Greece from Greece to Rome to have sunk there and after many Ages to have revived from those Ashes and to have sprung up again both in Italy and other more Western Provinces of Europe When Chaldaea and Aegypt were Learned and Civil Greece and Rome were as rude and barbarous as all Aegypt and Syria now are and have been long When Greece and Rome were at their heights in Arts and Science Gaul Germany Britain were as ignorant and barbarous as any Parts of Greece or Turkey can be now These and greater changes are made in the several Countries of the World and courses of time by the Revolutions of Empire the Devastations of Armies the Cruelties of Conquering and the Calamities of enslaved Nations by the violent Inundations of Water in some Countries and the Cruel Ravages of Plagues in others These sorts of accidents sometimes lay them so wast that when they rise again 't is from such low beginnings that they look like New-Created Regions or growing out of the Original State of Mankind and without any Records or Remembrances beyond certain short periods of Time Thus that vast Continent of Norway is said to have been so wholly desolated by a Plague about Eight or Nine Hundred Years ago that it was for some Ages following a very Desart and since all over-grown with Wood. And Ireland was so spoiled and wasted by the Conquests of the Sceutes and Danes that there hardly remains any Story or Tradition what that Island was how Planted or Governed above Five Hundred Years ago What changes have been made by Violent Storms and Inundations of the Sea in the Maritime Provinces of the Low-Countries is hard to know or to believe what is told nor how ignorant they have left us of all that passed there before a certain and short period of Time The Accounts of many other Countries would perhaps as hardly and as late have waded out of the Depths of Time and Gulphs of Ignorance had it not been for the Assistance of those two Languages to which we owe all we have of Learning or Ancient Records in the World For whether we have any thing of the Old Chaldaean Hebrew Arabian that is truly Genuine or more Ancient than the Augustan Age I am much in doubt yet 't is probable the vast Alexandrian Library must have chiefly consisted of Books composed in those Languages with the Aegyptian Syrian and Aethioptick or at least Translated out of them by the Care of the Aegyptian Kings or Priests as the Old Testament was wherein the Septuagints employed left their Name to that Famous Translation 'T is very true and just All that is said of the mighty Progress that Learning and Knowledge have made in these Western Parts of Europe within these hundred and fifty Years but that does not conclude it must be at a greater Heigth than it had been in other Countries where it was growing much longer Periods of Time it argues more how low it was then amongst us rather than how high it is now Upon the Fall of the Roman Empire almost all Learning was buried in it's Ruins The Northern Nations that Conquered or rather overwhelmed it by their Numbers were too barbarous to preserve the Remains of Learning or Civility more carefully than they did those of Statuary or Architecture which fell before their Brutish Rage The Saracens indeed from their Conquests of Aegypt Syria and Greece carried home great Spoils of Learning as well as other Riches and gave the Original of all that Knowledge which flourished for some Time among the Arabians and has since been copyed out of many Authors among them as theirs had been out of those of the Countries they had subdued nor indeed do Learning Civility Morality seem any where to have made a greater Growth in so short a Time than in that Empire nor to have flourished more than in the Reign of their Great Almanzor under whose Victorious Ensigns Spain was Conquered by the Moors but the Goths and all the rest of those Scythian Swarms that from beyond the Danube and the Elb under so many several Names over-run all Europe took very hardly and very late any Tincture of the Learning and Humanity that had flourished in the several Regions of it under the Protection and by the Example and Instructions of the Romans that had so long possessed them Those Northern Nations were indeed easier induced to embrace the Religion of those they had subdued and by their Devotion gave great Authority and Revenues and thereby Ease to the Clergy both Secular and Regular through all their Conquests Great Numbers of the better sort among the Oppressed Natives finding this vain among them and no other way to be safe and quiet under such rough Masters betook themselves to the Profession and Assemblies of Religious Orders and Fraternities and among those only were preserved all the poor Remainders of Learning in these several Countries But these good Men either contented themselves with their Devotion or with the Ease of quiet Lives or else employed their Thoughts and Studies to raise and maintain the Esteem and Authority of that Sacred Order to which they owed the Safety and Repose the Wealth and Honour they enjoyed And in this they so well succeeded that the Conquerors were governed by those they had subdued the Greatest Princes by the Meanest Priests and the Victorious Franks and Lombard Kings fell at the Feet of the Roman Prelates Whilst the Clergy were busied in these Thoughts or Studies the better sort among the Laity were wholly turned to Arms and to
Honour the meaner sort to Labour or to Spoil Princes taken up with Wars among themselves or in those of the Holy Land or between the Popes and Emperors upon Disputes of the Ecclesiastical and Secular Powers Learning so little in use among them that few could write or read besides those of the Long Robes During this Course of Time which lasted many Ages in the Western Parts of Europe The Greek Tongue was wholly lost and the Purity of the Roman to that degree that what remained of it was only a certain Jargon rather than Latin that passed among the Monks and Fryers who were not at all Learned and among the Students of the several Universities which served to Carry them to Rome in pursuit of Preferments or Causes depending there and little else When the Turks took Constantinople about two hundred Years agoe and soon after possessed themselves of all Greece the poor Natives fearing the Tyranny of those cruel Masters made their Escapes in great Numbers to the Neighbouring Parts of Christendom some by the Austrian Territories into Germany others by the Venetian into Italy and France several that were Learned among these Grecians and brought many Ancient Books with them in that Language began to teach it in these Countries first to gain subsistance and afterwards Favour in some Princes or Great Mens Courts who began to take a Pleasure or Pride in countenancing Learned Men Thus began the Restoration of Learning in these Parts with that of the Greek Tongue and soon after Revchlyn and Erasmus began that of the purer and ancient Latin After them Buchanan carried it I think to the greatest Heigth of any of the Moderns before or since The Monkish Latin upon this Return was laughed out of doors and remains only in the Inns of Germany or Poland and with the Restitution of these two Noble Languages and the Books remaining of them which many Princes and Prelates were curious to recover and collect Learning of all sorts began to thrive in these Western Regions and since that time and in the first succeeding Century made perhaps a greater Growth than in any other that we know of in such a compass of Time considering into what Depths of Ignorance it was sunk before But why from thence should be concluded That it has out-grown all that was Ancient I see no Reason If a Strong and Vigororus Man at Thirty Years old should fall into a Consumption and so draw on till Fifty in the extreamest Weakness and Infirmity after that should begin to Recover Health till Sixty so as to be again as Strong as Men usually are at that Age It might perhaps truly be said in that case that he had grown more in Strength that last Ten Years than any others of his Life but not that he was grown to more Strength and Viguor than he had at Thirty Years old But what are the Sciences wherein we pretend to excel I know of no New Philosophers that have made Entries upon that Noble Stage for Fifteen Hundred Years past unless Des Cartes and Hobbs should pretend to it of whom I shall make no Critick here but only say that by what appears of Learned Mens Opinions in this Age they have by no Means eclypsed the Lustre of Plato Aristotle Epicurus or others of the Ancients For Grammar or Rhetorick no Man ever disputed it with them nor for Poetry that ever I heard of besides the New French Author I have mentioned and against whose Opinion there could I think never have been given stronger Evidence than by his own Poems printed together with that Treatise There is nothing New in Astronomy to vye with the Ancients unless it be the Copernican System nor in Physick unless Harvey's Circulation of the Blood But whether either of these be modern discoveries or derived from old Fountains is disputed Nay it is so too whether they are true or no for though Reason may seem to favour them more than the contrary Opinions yet Sense can very hardly allow them and to satisfie Mankind both these must concur But if they are true yet these two great discoveries have made no change in the conclusions of Astronomy nor in the practise of Physick and so have been of little use to the World though perhaps of much honor to the Authors What are become of the Charms of Musick by which Men and Beasts Fishes Fowls and Serpents were so frequently Enchanted and their very Natures changed By which the Passions of Men were raised to the greatest heigth and violence and then as suddenly appeased so as they might be justly said to be turned into Lyons or Lambs into Wolves or into Harts by the Power and Charms of this admirable Art 'T is agreed by the Learned that the Science of Musick so admired of the Ancients is wholly lost in the World and that what we have now is made up out of certain Notes that fell into the fancy or observation of a poor Fryar in chanting his Mattins So as those Two Divine Excellencies of Musick and Poetry are grown in a manner to be little more but the one Fidling and the other Rhyming and are indeed very worthy the ignorance of the Fryer and the barbarousness of the Goths that introduced them among us What have we remaining of Magick by which the Indians the Chaldaeans the Aegyptians were so renowned and by which effects so wonderful and to common Men so astonishing were produced as made them have recourse to Spirits or Supernatural Powers for some account of their strange Operations By Magick I mean some excelling knowledge of Nature and the various Powers and Qualities in it's several productions and the application of certain Agents to certain Patients which by Force of some peculiar Qualities produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar Observation or Comprehension These are by ignorant People called Magick and Conjuring and such like Terms and an Account of them much about as wise is given by the common Learned from Sympathys Antipathys Idiosyncrasys Talismans and some scraps or Terms left us by the Aegyptians or Grecians of the Antient Magick but the Science seems with several others to be wholly lost What Traces have we left of that admirable Science or Skill in Architecture by which such stupendious Fabricks have been raised of old and so many of the Wonders of the World been produced and which are so little approached by our Modern Atchievements of this sort that they hardly fall within our Imagination Not to mention the Walls and Palace of Babylon the Pyramids of Aegypt the Tomb of Mausolus or Collosse of Rhodes the Temples and Palaces of Greece and Rome What can be more admirable in this kind than the Roman Theatres their Aqueducts and their Bridges among which that of Trajan over the Danube seems to have been the last Flight of the Ancient Architecture The stupendious Effects of this Science sufficiently evince at what Heights the Mathematicks were among the Antients but if
this be not enough whoever would be satisfied need go no further than the Siege of Syracuse and that mighty Defence made against the Roman Power more by the wonderful Science and Arts of Archimedes and almost Magical Force of his Engines than by all the Strength of the City or Number and Bravery of the Inhabitants The greatest Invention that I know of in later Ages has been that of the Load-Stone and consequently the greatest Improvement has been made in the Art of Navigation yet there must be allowed to have been something stupendious in the Numbers and in the Built of their Ships and Gallies of old and the Skill of Pilots from the Observation of the Stars in the more serene Climates may be judged by the Navigations so celebrated in Story of the Tyrians and Carthaginians not to mention other Nations However 't is to this we owe the Discovery and Commerce of so many vast Countries which were very little if at all known to the Antients and the experimental Proof of this Terrestrial Globe which was before only Speculation but has since been surrounded by the Fortune and Boldness of several Navigators From this great though fortuitous Invention and the Consequence thereof it must be allowed that Geography is mightily advanced in these latter Ages The Vast Continents of China the East and West Indies the long Extent and Coasts of Africa with the numberless Islands belonging to them have been hereby introduced into our Acquaintance and our Maps and great Increases of Wealth and Luxury but none of Knowledge brought among us further than the Extent and Scituation of Country the Customs and Manners of so many original Nations which we call Barbarous and I am sure have treated them as if we hardly esteemed them to be a Part of Mankind I do not doubt but many Great and more Noble Uses would have been made of such Conquests or Discoveries if they had fallen to the share of the Greeks and Romans in those Ages when Knowledge and Fame were in as great Request as endless Gains and Wealth are among us now and how much greater Discoveries might have been made by such Spirits as theirs is hard to guess I am sure ours though great yet look very imperfect as to what the Face of this Terrestrial Globe would probably appear if they had been pursued as far as we might justly have expected from the Progresses of Navigation since the Use of the Compass which seems to have been long at a stand How little has been performed of what has been so often and so confidently promised of a North-West Passage to the East of Tartary and North of China How little do we know of the Lands on that side of the Magellan Straits that lye towards the South Pole which may be vast Islands or Continents for ought any can yet aver though that Passage was so long since found out Whether Japan be Island or Continent with some Parts of Tartary on the North side is not certainly agreed The Lands of Yedso upon the North-East Continent have been no more than Coasted and whether they may not joyn to the Northern Continent of America is by some doubted But the Defect or Negligence seems yet to have been greater towards the South where we know little beyond Thirty Five Degrees and that only by the Necessity of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in our East-India Voiages yet a Continent has been long since found out within Fifteen Degrees to South and about the Length of Java which is Marqued by the Name of New Holland in the Maps and to what Extent none knows either to the South the East or the West yet the Learned have been of Opinion That there must be a Ballance of Earth on that side of the Line in some Proportion to what there is on the other and that it cannot be all Sea from Thirty Degrees to the South-Pole since we have found Land to above Sixty Five Degrees towards the North. But our Navigators that way have been confined to the Roads of Trade and our Discoveries bounded by what we can manage to a certain Degree of Gain And I have heard it said among the Dutch that their East-India-Company have long since forbidden and under the greatest Penalties any further Attempts of discovering that Continent having already more Trade in those Parts than they can turn to Account and fearing some more Populous Nation of Europe might make great Establishments of Trade in some of those unknown Regions which might ruin or impair what they have already in the Indies Thus we are lame still in Geography it self which we might have ex-expected to run up to so much greater Perfection by the Use of the Compass and it seems to have been little advanced these last Hundred Years So far have we been from improving upon those Advantages we have received from the Knowledge of the Ancients that since the late Restoration of Learning and Arts among us our first Flights seem to have been the highest and a sudden Damp to have fallen upon our Wings which has hindered us from rising above certain Heights The Arts of Painting and Statuary began to revive with Learning in Europe and make a great but short Flight so for as these last Hundred Years we have not had One Master in either of them who deserved a Rank with those that flourished in that short Period after they began among us It were too great a Mortification to think That the same Fate has happened to us even in our Modern Learning as if the Growth of that as well as of Natural Bodies had some short Periods beyond which it could not reach and after which it must begin to decay It falls in one Country or one Age and rises again in others but never beyond a certain Pitch One man or one Country at a certain Time runs a great Length in some certain Kinds of Knowledge but lose as much Ground in others that were perhaps as useful and as valuable There is a certain Degree of Capacity in the greatest Vessel and when 't is full if you pour in still it must run out some way or other and the more it runs out on one side the less runs out at the other So the greatest Memory after a certain Degree as it learns or retains more of some Things or Words loses and forgets as much of others The largest and deepest Reach of Thought the more it pursues some certain Subjects the more it neglects others Besides few Men or none excel in all Faculties of Mind A great Memory may fail of Invention both may want Judgment to Digest or Apply what they Remember or Invent. Great Courage may want Caution great Prudence may want Vigour yet all are necessary to make a great Commander But how can a Man hope to excel in all qualities when some are produced by the heat others by the coldness of Brain and Temper The abilities of Man must fall short on one
other Sects in this point siding in a manner with one or the other of these in their Conceptions or Expressions The Stoicks would have it to consist in Vertue and the Epicureans in Pleasure yet the most reasonable of the Stoicks made the pleasure of Vertue to be the greatest Happiness and the best of the Epicureans made the greatest Pleasure to consist in Vertue and the difference between these two seems not easily discovered All agreed the greatest Temper if not the total subduing of Passion and exercise of Reason to be the state of the greatest Felicity To live without Desires or Fears or those Perturbations of Mind and Thought which Passions raise To place true Riches in wanting little rather than in possessing much and true Pleasure in Temperance rather than in satisfying the Senses To live with indifference to the common Enjoyments and Accidents of Life and with Constancy upon the greatest Blows of Fate or of Chance Not to disturb our Minds with sad Reflections upon what is past nor with anxious Cares or raving Hopes about what is to come neither to disquiet Life with the Fears of Death nor Death with the Desires of Life but in both and in all things else to follow Nature seem to be the Precepts most agreed among them Thus Reason seems only to have been called in to allay those Disorders which it self had raised to cure its own Wounds and pretends to make us wise no other way than by rendring us insensible This at least was the Profession of many rigid Stoicks who would have had a wise Man not only without any sort of Passion but without any Sense of Pain as well as Pleasure and to enjoy Himself in the midst of Diseases and Torments as well as of Health and Ease a Principle in my mind against common Nature and common Sense and which might have told us in fewer Words or with less Circumstance that a Man to be wise should not be a Man and this perhaps might have been easie enough to believe but nothing so hard as the other The Epicureans were more intelligible in their Notion and fortunate in their Expression when they placed a Mans Happiness in the Tranquility of Mind and Indolence of Body for while we are composed of both I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel As Men of several Languages say the same things in very different Words so in several Ages Countries Constitutions of Laws and Religion the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions What is called by the Stoicks Apathy or Dispassion by the Scepticks Indisturbance by the Molinists Quietism by common Men Peace of Conscience seems all to mean but great Tranquility of Mind though it be made to proceed from so diverse Causes as Human Wisdom Innocence of Life or Resignation to the Will of God An old Usurer had the same Notion when He said No Man could have Peace of Conscience that run out of his Estate not comprehending what else was meant by that Phrase besides true Quiet and Content of Mind which however expressed is I suppose meant by all to be the best account that can be given of the Happiness of Man since no Man can pretend to be happy without it I have often wondred how such sharp and violent Invectives came to be made so generally against Epicurus by the Ages that followed Him whose admirable Wit Felicity of Expression Excellence of Nature Sweetness of Conversation Temperance of Life and Constancy of Death made Him so beloved by His Friends admired by His Scholars and honoured by the Athenians But this Injustice may be fastned chiefly upon the envy and malignity of the Stoicks at first then upon the Mistakes of some gross Pretenders to His Sect who took Pleasure only to be Sensual and afterwards upon the Piety of the Primitive Christians who esteemed his Principles of Natural Philosophy more opposite to those of our Religion than either the Platonists the Peripateticks or Stoicks themselves Yet I confess I do not know why the account given by Lucretius of the Gods should be thought more impious than that given by Homer who makes them not only subject to all the weakest Passions but perpetually busie in all the worst or meanest Actions of Men. But Epicurus has found so great Advocates of His Vertue as well as Learning and Inventions that there need no more and the Testimonies of Diogenes Laertius alone seem too sincere and impartial to be disputed or to want the assistance of Modern Authors If all failed He would be but too well defended by the Excellence of so many of His Sect in all Ages and especially of those who lived in the compass of one but the greatest in Story both as to Persons and Events I need name no more than Caesar Atticus Mecoenas Lucretius Virgil Horace all admirable in their several kinds and perhaps unparallel'd in Story Caesar if consider'd in all Lights may justly challenge the first place in the Registers we have of Mankind equal only to Himself and surpassing all others of His Nation and His Age in the Vertues and Excellencies of a Statesman a Captain an Orator an Historian besides all these a Poet a Philosopher when His leisure allowed Him the greatest Man of Counsel and of Action of Design and Execution the greatest Nobleness of Birth of Person and of Countenance the greatest Humanity and Clemency of nature in the midst of the greatest Provocations Occasions and Examples of Cruelty and Revenge 't is true He overturned the Laws and Constitutions of His Country yet 't was after so many others had not only begun but proceeded very far to change and violate them so as in what He did He seems rather to have prevented others than to have done what Himself designed for though His Ambition was vast yet it seems to have been raised to those Heights rather by the Insolence of His Enemies than by His own Temper and that what was natural to Him was only a desire of true Glory and to acquire it by good Actions as well as great by Conquests of Barbarous Nations extent of the Roman Empire defending at first the Liberties of the Plebeians opposing the Faction that had begun in Sylla and ended in Pompey and in the whole course of His Victories and Successes seeking all occasions of Bounty to His Friends and Clemency to His Enemies Atticus appears to have been one of the wisest and best of the Romans Learned without pretending Good without Affectation Bountiful without Design a Friend to all Men in misfortune a Flatterer to no Man in Greatness or Power a Lover of Mankind and beloved by them all and by these Vertues and Dispositions He passed safe and untouched through all the Flames of Civil Dissentions that ravag'd His Country the greatest part of His Life and though He never entred into any Publick Affairs or particular Factions of His State yet He was favoured honoured and courted by them
times been the happiest Regions for Fruits of all the East by the Excellence of Soyl the position of Mountains the frequency of Streams rather than the Advantages of Climat And 't is great pity we do not yet see the History of Chasimir which Mounsieur Bernier assured me He had translated out of Persian and intended to publish and of which He has given such a tast in His excellent Memoirs of the Mogul's Country The next Gardens we read of are those of Solomon planted with all sorts of Fruit-Trees and watered with Fountains and though we have no more particular Description of them yet we may find they were the Places where He passed the times of His Leisure and Delight where the Houses as well as Grounds were adorned with all that could be of pleasing and elegant and were the Retreats and Entertainments of those among his Wives that He loved the best and 't is not improbable that the Paradises mentioned by Strabo were planted by this great and wisest King But the Idea of the Garden must be very great if it answers at all to that of the Gardner who must have employed a great deal of His Care and of His Study as well as of His Leisure and Thought in these Entertainments since He writ of all Plants from the Cedar to the Shrub What the Gardens of the Hesperides were we have little or no account further than the mention of them and thereby the Testimony of their having been in use and request in such remoteness of place and Antiquity of Time The Garden of Alcinous described by Homer seems wholly Poetical and made at the pleasure of the Painter like the rest of the Romantick Palace in that little barren Island of Phaeacia or Corfu Yet as all the pieces of this transcendent Genius are composed with excellent Knowledge as well as Fancy so they seldom sail of Instruction as well as Delight to all that read Him The Seat of this Garden joyning to the Gates of the Palace the Compass of the Inclosure being Four Acres the tall Trees of Shade as well as those of Fruit the two Fountains one for the use of the Garden and the other of the Palace the continual Succession of Fruits throughout the whole Year are for ought I know the best Rules or Provisions that can go towards composing the best Gardens nor is it unlikely that Homer may have drawn this Picture after the life of some he had seen in Ionia the Country and usual Abode of this Divine Poet and indeed the Region of the most refined Pleasures and Luxury as well as Invention and Wit For the humour and custom of Gardens may have descended earlier into the lower Asia from Damascus Assyria and other parts of the Eastern Empires though they seem to have made late Entrance and smaller Improvement in those of Greece and Rome at least in no proportion to their other Inventions or Refinements of Pleasure and Luxury The long and flourishing Peace of the two first Empires gave earlier rise and growth to Learning and Civility and all the Consequences of them in Magnificence and Elegancy of Building and Gardening whereas Greece and Rome were almost perpetually engaged in Quarrels and Wars either abroad or at home and so were busie in Actions that were done under the Sun rather than those under the Shade These were the Entertainments of the softer Nations that fell under the Vertue and Prowess of the two last Empires which from those Conquests brought home mighty Increases both of Riches and Luxury and so perhaps lost more than they got by the Spoils of the East There may be another reason for the small advance of Gardning in those excellent and more temperate Climats where the Air and Soyl were so apt of themselves to produce the best sorts of Fruits without the necessity of cultivating them by labour and care whereas the hotter Climats as well as the cold are forced upon Industry and Skill to produce or improve many Fruits that grow of themselves in the more temperate Regions However it were we have very little mention of Gardens in old Greece or in old Rome for pleasure or with Elegance nor of much curiousness or care to introduce the Fruits of Foreign Climats contenting themselves with those which were Native of their own and these were the Vine the Olive the Fig the Pear and the Apple Cato as I remember mentions no more and their Gardens were then but the necessary part of their Farms intended particularly for the cheap and easie Food of their Hinds or Slaves imployed in their Agriculture and so were turned chiefly to all the common sorts of Plants Herbs or Legumes as the French call them proper for common nourishment and the name of Hortus is taken to be from Ortus because it perpetually furnishes some rise or production of something new in the World Lucullus after the Mithridatick War first brought Cherries from Pontus into Italy which so generally pleas'd and were so easily propagated in all Climats that within the space of about an hundred years having travelled Westward with the Roman Conquests they grew common as far as the Rhine and passed over into Britain After the Conquest of Africk Greece the lesser Asia and Syria were brought into Italy all the sorts of their Mala which we interpret Apples and might signifie no more at first but were afterwards applied to many other Foreign Fruits The Apricocks coming from Epire were called Mala Epirotica Peaches from Persia Mala Persica Citrons from Media Medica Pomgranets from Carthage Punica Quinces Cothonea from a small Island in the Grecian Seas their best Pears were brought from Alexandria Numidia Greece and Numantia as appears by their several Appellations Their Plums from Armenia Syria but chiefly from Damascus The kinds of these are reckon'd in Nero's time to have been near Thirty as well as of Figs and many of them were entertained at Rome with so great Applause and so general Vogue that the great Captains and even Consular Men who first brought them over took pride in giving them their own Names by which they run a great while in Rome as in memory of some great Service or Pleasure they had done their Country so that not only Laws and Battels but several sorts of Apples or Mala and of Pears were called Manlian and Claudian Pompeyan and Tiberian and by several other such Noble Names Thus the Fruits of Rome in about an hundred years came from Countries as far as their Conquests had reached and like Learning Architecture Painting and Statuary made their great advances in Italy about the Augustan Age. What was of most request in their common Gardens in Virgil's time or at least in His Youth may be conjectured by the Description of His old Corycian's Garden in the Fourth of the Georgicks which begins Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus altis Among Flowers the Roses had the first place especially a kind which bore twice a
year and none other sorts are here mention'd besides the Narcissus tho the Violet and the Lilly were very common and the next in esteem especially the Breve Lillium which was the Tubereuse The Plants he mentions are the Apium which tho commonly interpreted Parsly yet comprehends all sorts of Smallage whereof Sellary is one Cucumis which takes in all sorts of Melons as well as Cucumbers Olus which is a common Word for all sorts of Pot-herbs and Legumes Verbenas which signifies all kinds of Sweet or Sacred Plants that were used for adorning the Altars as Bays Olive Rosemary Mirtle the Acanthus seems to be what we call Pericanthe but what their Hederae were that deserved place in a Garden I cannot guess unless they had sorts of Ivy unknown to us nor what His Vescum Papaver was since Poppies with us are of no use in eating The Fruits mentioned are only Apples Pears and Plums for Olives Vines and Figs were grown to be Fruits of their Fields rather than of their Gardens The Shades were the Elm the Pine the Lime-tree and the Platanus or Plane-tree whose Leaf and Shade of all others was the most in request and having been brought out of Persia was such an Inclination among the Greeks and Romans that they usually fed it with Wine instead of Water they believed this Tree loved that Liquor as well as those that used to drink under its Shade which was a great humour and custom and perhaps gave rise to the other by observing the growth of the Tree or largeness of the Leafs where much Wine was spilt or left and thrown upon the Roots 'T is great pity the hast which Virgil seems here to have been in should have hindered Him from entring farther into the Account or Instructions of Gardning which He said He could have given and which He seems to have so much esteemed and loved by that admirable Picture of this old Man's Felicity which He draws like so great a Master with one stroke of a Pencil in those Four Words Regum aequabat opes animis That in the midst of these small Possessions upon a few Acres of barren ground yet He equalled all the Wealth and Opulence of Kings in the Ease Content and Freedom of His Mind I am not satisfied with the common Acception of the Mala Aurea for Oranges nor do I find any passage in the Authors of that Age which gives me the Opinion that these were otherwise known to the Romans than as Fruits of the Eastern Climats I should take their Mala Aurea to be rather some kind of Apples so called from the golden Colour as some are amongst us for otherwise the Orange-tree is too Noble in the beauty taste and smell of its Fruit in the Perfume and Vertue of its Flowers in the perpetual Verdure of its Leaves and in the excellent uses of all these both for Pleasure and Health not to have deserved any particular mention in the Writings of an Age and Nation so refined and exquisite in all sorts of delicious Luxury The charming Description Virgil makes of the Happy Apple must be intended either for the Citron or for some sort of Orange growing in Media which was either so proper to that Country as not to grow in any other as a certain sort of Fig was to Damascus or to have lost its Vertue by changing Soyls or to have had its effect of curing some sort of Poyson that was usual in that Country but particular to it I cannot forbear inserting these few Lines out of the second of Virgil's Georgicks not having ever heard any body else take notice of them Media fert tristes succos tardumque saporem Foelicis Mali quo non praesentius ullum Pocula si quando saevae infecere Novercae Auxilium venit ac membris agit atra venena Ipsa ingens arbos faciemque similima lauro Et si non alios late jactaret odores Laurus erit folia haud ullis labentia ventis Flos apprima tenax animas olentia Medi Ora fovent illo ac senibus medicantur anhelis Media brings poysonous herbs and the flat taste Of the blest Apple than which ne're was found A help more present when curst Stepdames mix Their mortal Cups to drive the Venom out 'T is a large Tree and like a Bays in hue And did it not such Odours cast about 'T would be a Bays the leafs with no winds fall The Flowers all excel with these the Medes Perfume their Breaths and cure old pursie Men. The Tree being so like a Bays or Lawrel the slow or dull taste of the Apple the Vertue of it against Poyson seem to describe the Citron The Perfume of the Flowers and Vertues of them to cure ill Sents of Mouth or Breath or shortness of Wind in pursie old Men seem to agree most with the Orange If Flos apprima tenax mean only the Excellence of the Flower above all others it may be intended for the Orange If it signifies the Flowers growing most upon the tops of the Trees it may be rather the Citron for I have been so curious as to bring up a Citron from a Kernel which at twelve years age began to flower and I observed all the Flowers to grow upon the top Branches of the Tree but to be nothing so high or sweet-sented as the Orange On the other side I have always heard Oranges to pass for a Cordial Juyce and a great Preservative against the Plague which is a sort of Venom so that I know not to which of these we are to ascribe this lovely Picture of the Happy Apple but I am satisfied by it that neither of them was at all common if at all known in Italy at that time or long after though the Fruit be now so frequent there in Fields atleast in some parts and make so common and delicious a part of Gardning even in these Northern Clymats In these Countries our Gardens are very different from what they were in Greece and Italy and from what they are now in those Regions in Spain or the Southern parts of France And as most general Customs in Countries grow from the different nature of Climats Soyls or Situations and from the necessities or Industry they impose so do these In the warmer Regions Fruits and Flowers of the best sorts are so common and of so easie Production that they grow in Fields and are not worth the cost of inclosing or the care of more than ordinary cultivating On the other side the great Pleasures of those Climats are coolness of Air and what ever looks cool even to the Eyes and relieves them from the unpleasant sight of dusty Streets or parched Fields This makes the Gardens of those Countries be chiefly valued by largeness of Extent which gives greater play and openness of Air by Shades of Trees by frequency of living Streams or Fountains by Perspectives by Statues and by Pillars and Obelisks of Stone scattered up and
the middle and at each end into a very large Parterre This is divided into Quarters by Gravel Walks and adorned with two Fountains and eight Statues in the several Quarters at the end of the Terras Walk are two Summer-Houses and the sides of the Parterre are ranged with two large Cloysters open to the Garden upon Arches of Stone and ending with two other Summer-Houses even with the Cloysters which are paved with Stone and designed for Walks of Shade there being none other in the whole Parterre Over these two Cloysters are two Terrasses covered with Lead and fenced with Balusters and the Passage into these airy Walks is out of the two Summer-Houses at the end of the first Terras-walk The Cloyster facing the South is covered with Vines and would have been proper for an Orange-house and the other for Myrtles or other more common Greens and had I doubt not been cast for that purpose if this piece of Gardning had been then in as much Vogue as it is now From the middle of this Parterre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a Grotto that lies between them covered with Lead and Flat into the lower Garden which is all Fruit-trees ranged about the several Quarters of a Wilderness which is very shady the Walks here are all green the Grotto imbelish'd with Figures of Shell Rock-work Fountains and Water-works If the Hill had not ended with the lower Garden and the Wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the Park they might have added a third Quarter of all Greens but this want is supplied by a Garden on the other side the House which is all of that sort very wild shady and a dorned with rough Rock-work and Fountains This was Moor-Park when I was acquainted with it and the sweetest place I think that I have seen in my Life either before or since at home or abroad what it is now I can give little account having passed through several hands that have made great Changes in Gardens as well as House but the remembrance of what it was is too pleasant ever to forget and therefore I do not believe to have mistaken the Figure of it which may serve for a Pattern to the best Gardens of our manner and that are most proper for our Country and Climat What I have said of the best Forms of Gardens is meant only of such as are in some sort regular for there may be other Forms wholly irregular that may for ought I know have more Beauty than any of the others but they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of Nature in the Seat or some great race of Fancy or Judgment in the Contrivance which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some Figure which shall yet upon the whole be very agreeable Something of this I have seen in some places but heard more of it from others who have lived much among the Chineses a People whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe as their Country does Among us the Beauty of Building and Planting is placed chiefly in some certain Proportions Symmetries or Uniformities our Walks and our Trees ranged so as to answer one another and at exact Distances The Chineses scorn this way of Planting and say a Boy that can tell an hundred may plant Walks of Trees in strait Lines and over against one another and to what Length and Extent He pleases But their greatest reach of Imagination is employed in contriving Figures where the Beauty shall be great and strike the Eye but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observ'd And though we have hardly any Notion of this sort of Beauty yet they have a particular Word to express it and where they find it hit their Eye at first sight they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable or any such expression of Esteem And whoever observes the Work upon the best Indian Gowns or the painting upon their best Skreens or Purcellans will find their Beauty is all of this kind that is without order But I should hardly advise any of these Attempts in the Figure of Gardens among us they are Adventures of too hard atchievement for any common Hands and though there may be more Honour if they succeed well yet there is more Dishonour if they fail and 't is twenty to one they will whereas in regular Figures 't is hard to make any great and remarkable Faults The Picture I have met with in some relations of a Garden made by a Dutch Governor of their Colony upon the Cape de Buen Esperance is admirable and described to be of an Oblong-Figure very large Extent and divided into four Quarters by long and cross Walks ranged with all sorts of Orange-trees Lemmons Limes and Citrons each of these four Quarters is planted with the Trees Fruits Flowers and Plants that are native and proper to each of the four parts of the World so as in this one Inclosure are to be found the several Gardens of Europe Asia Africk and America There could not be in my mind a greater Thought of a Gardner nor a nobler Idea of a Garden nor better suited or chosen for the Climat which is about Thirty Degrees and may pass for the Hesperides of our Age whatever or where-ever the other was Yet this is agreed by all to have been in the Islands or Continent upon the South-West of Africa but what their Forms or their Fruits were none that I know pretend to tell nor whether their Golden Apples were for taste or only for sight as those of Montezuma were in Mexico who had large Trees with Stocks Branches Leafs and Fruits all admirably composed and wrought of Gold but this was only stupendious in cost and art and answers not at all in my Opinion the delicious Varieties of Nature in other Gardens What I have said of Gardning is perhaps enough for any Gentleman to know so as to make no great Faults nor be much imposed upon in the Designs of that kind which I think ought to be applauded and encouraged in all Countries That and building being a sort of Creation that raise beautiful Fabricks and Figures out of nothing that make the Convenience and Pleasure of all private Habitations that employ many Hands and circulate much Mony among the poorer sort and Artizans that are a Publick Service to ones Country by the Example as well as effect which adorn the Scene improve the Earth and even the Air it self in some Degree The rest that belongs to this Subject must be a Gardners part upon whose Skill Diligence and Care the Beauty of the Grounds and Excellence of the Fruits will much depend Though if the Soyl and Sorts be well chosen well suited and disposed to the Walls the Ignorance or Carelesness of the Servants can hardly leave the Master disappointed I will not enter further upon His Trade than to advise Him in all
had the honour of being called Divine and of giving that Esteem or Appellation to such as possessed them in very eminent Degrees which are Heroick Virtue and Poetry For Prophecy cannot be esteemed any Excellency of Nature or of Art but whereever it is true is an immediate Gift of God and bestowed according to His Pleasure and upon Subjects of the meanest capacity upon Women or Children or even things inanimate as the Stones placed in the High-Priest's Breast-Plate among the Jews which was a sacred Oracle among them I will leave Poetry to an Essay by it self and dedicate this only to that antiquated Shrine of Heroick Virtue which however forgotten or unknown in later Ages must yet be allowed to have produced in the World the advantages most valued among Men and which most distinguish their Understandings and their Lives from the rest of their fellow Creatures Though it be easier to describe Heroick Virtue by the Effects and Examples than by Causes or Definitions yet it may be said to arise from some great and native Excellency of Temper or Genius transcending the common race of Mankind in Wisdom Goodness and Fortitude These ingredients advantaged by Birth improved by Education and assisted by Fortune seem to make that noble composition which gives such a lustre to those who have possest it as made them appear to common eyes something more than Mortals and to have been born of some mixture between Divine and Humane Race To have been honoured and obeyed in their Lives and after their Death 's bewailed and adored The greatness of their Wisdom appeared in the Excellency of their Inventions And these by the Goodness of their Nature were turned and exercised upon such Subjects as were of general good to Mankind in the common uses of life or to their own Countries in the Institutions of such Laws Orders or Governments as were of most ease safety and advantage to Civil Society Their Valour was imployed in defending their own Countries from the violence of ill Men at home or Enemies abroad in reducing their barbarous Neighbours to the same forms and orders of Civil Lives and Institutions or in relieving others from the Cruelties and Oppressions of Tyranny and Violence These are all comprehended in three Verses of Virgil describing the blessed Seats in Elysium and those that enjoyed them Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo Here such as for their Country wounds receiv'd Or who by Arts invented Life improv'd Or by deserving made themselves remembred And indeed the Character of Heroick Virtue seems to be in short The deserving well of Mankind Where this is chief in design and great in success the pretence to a Hero lies very fair and can never be allowed without it I have said that this Excellency of Genius must be native because it can never grow to any great heigth if it be only acquired or affected but it must be ennobled by Birth to give it more Lustre Esteem and Authority it must be cultivated by Education and Instruction to improve its growth and direct its end and application and it must be assisted by Fortune to preserve it to maturity because the noblest Spirit or Genius in the World if it falls though never so bravely in its first enterprises cannot deserve enough of Mankind to pretend to so great a reward as the esteem of Heroick Virtue And yet perhaps many a person has dyed in the first battle or adventure he atchieved and lies buried in silence and oblivion who had he out-lived as many dangers as Alexander did might have shined as bright in Honour and Fame Now since so many Stars go to the making up of this Constellation 't is no wonder it has so seldom appeared in the World nor that when it does it is received and followed with so much gazing and so much veneration Among the simpler Ages or Generations of Men in several Countries Those who were the first Inventers of Arts generally received and applauded as most necessary or useful to human life were honoured alive and after death worshipped as Gods And so were those who had been the first Authors of any good and well instituted Civil Government in any Country by which the native Inhabitants were reduced from savage and brutish lives to the safety and convenience of Societies the enjoyment of Property the observance of Orders and the obedience of Laws which were followed by Security Plenty Civility Riches Industry and all kinds of Arts. The evident advantages and common benefits of these sorts of Institutions made People generally inclined at home to obey such Governors the Neighbour Nations to esteem them and thereby willingly enter into their Protection or easily yield to the force of their Arms and Prowess Thus Conquests began to be made in the World and upon the same designs of reducing Barbarous Nations unto Civil and well Regulated Constitutions and Governments and of subduing those by force to obey them who refused to accept willingly the advantages of Life or condition that were thereby offered them Such Persons of old who excelling in those Vertues were attended by these fortunes and made great and famous Conquests and left them under good Constitutions of Laws and Governments Or who instituted excellent and lasting orders and frames of any Political State in what compass soever of Country or under what Names soever of Civil Government were obeyed as Princes or Law-givers in their own times and were called in after Ages by the name of Heroes From these sources I believe may be deduced all or most of the Theology or Idolatry of all the ancient Pagan Countries within the compass of the Four great Empires so much renowned in Story and perhaps of some others as great in their Constitutions and as extended in their Conquests though not so much celebrated or observed by Learned Men. From all I can gather upon the Surveys of ancient Story I am apt to conclude that Saturn was a King of Crete and expelled that Kingdom by his Son That Jupiter having driven out his Father from Crete conquered Greece or at least the Peloponesus and having among those Inhabitants introduced the use of Agriculture of Property and Civility and established a just and regular Kingdom was by them adored as chief of their Gods Ante Jovem nulli subigerunt arva coloni That His Brothers Sisters Sons and Daughters were worshipped likewise for the inventions of things chiefly useful necessary or agreeable to Humane Life So Neptune for the art or improvement of Navigation Vulcan for that of Forging Brass and Iron Minerva of Spinning Apollo of Musick and Poetry Mercury of Manual Arts and Merchandise Bacchus for the invention of Wine and Ceres of Corn. I do not find any traces left by which a probable conjecture may be made of the Age wherein this race of Saturn flourished in the World nor consequently
what length of time they were adored for as to Bacehus and Hercules it is generally agreed that there were more than one or two of those Names in very different times and perhaps Countries as Greece and Egypt and that the last who was Son of Alcmena and one of the Argonauts was very modern in respect of the other more ancient who was contemporary with the race of Jupiter But the Story of that Bacehus and Hercules who are said to have Conquered India is grown too obscure by the dark shades of so great Antiquity or disguised by the mask of Fables and Fiction of Poets The same divine Honours were rendered by the Aegyptians to Osyris in whose Temple was inscribed on a Pillar that he had gone through all Countries and every where taught Men all that he found necessary for the common good of Mankind By the Assyrians to Belus the Founder of that Kingdom and great Inventor or Improver of Astronomy among the Chaldaeans By the Original Latins or Hetruscans to Janus who introduced Agriculture into Italy and these Three were worshipped as Gods by those ancient and Learned Nations Ninus and Sesostris were renowned for their mighty Conquests and esteemed the two great Heroes of Assyria and of Egypt the first having extended his Victories to the River Indus and the other those of the Aegyptians over Asia as far as Pontus The time of Ninus is controverted among Historians being by some placed Thirteen by others Eight Hundred Years before Sardanapalus But that of Sesostris is in my opinion much harder to be affirmed For I do not see how their opinion can be allowed who make him to be Sesack that took Jerusalem in the time of Rehoboam since no more is said in Scripture of the progress of that Expedition Nor is the time of it mentioned in the Graecian Story though some Records are there found of all that passed after the Trojan War and with distinction enough But the most ancient among them speak of the Reign of Sesostris and His mighty Conquests as very ancient then and agree the Kingdom of Choleos to have descended from a Colony there Established by this famous King as a Monument how far Northward his Victories had extended Now this Kingdom flourished in the time of the Argonauts and excelled in those Arts of Magiek and Enchantments which they were thought to have brought with them out of Egypt so as I think the Story of this King must be reckoned as almost covered with the Ruins of Time The two next Heroes that enter the Scene are the Theban Hercules and Theseus both renowned among the Greeks for freeing their Country from Fierce Wild Beasts or from fiercer and wilder Men that infested them from Robbers and Spoilers or from cruel and Lawless Tyrants Theseus was besides honoured as Founder of the more Civil State or Kingdom of Athens which City first began to flourish and grow great by his Institutions though His Father had been King of the Scattered Villages or Inhabitants of Attica In the same Age flourished Minos King of Crete reputed to be Son of Jupiter who by the force and number of his Fleets became Lord of the Aegaean Islands and most of the Coasts of Greece and was renowned as a Heroe for the justness of his Laws and the greatness of his Reign For the Heroes in the time of the Trojan Wars so much celebrated in those two charming Poems which from them were called Heroical though 't is easy to take their Characters from those admirable Pictures drawn of them by Homer and Virgil yet 't is hard to find them in the Relations of any Authentick Story That which may be observed is that all the Conduct and Courage of Hector were imployed in the defence of His Country and his Father against a Foreign Invasion The valour of Achilles was exercised in the common cause wherein his whole Nation were engaged upon the fatal Revenge of the Rape of Helen though he had been assured by certain Prophecies that he should dye before the Walls of Troy and Aeneas having imployed His utmost Prowess in defence of his Country saved his Father and the Trojan Gods gathered up the Remainders of his Ruined Country sailed to Italy and there Founded a Kingdom which gave rise to the Greatest Empire of the World About Two Hundred and Fifty Years after these Lycurgus instituted the Spartan State upon Laws and Orders so different from those usual in those Times and Countries that more than Humane Authority seemed necessary to establish them and the Pythian Priestess told him she did not know whether she should call Him a God or a Man And indeed no Civil or Politick Constitutions have been more celebrated than His by the best Authors of ancient Story and Times The next Heroes we meet with upon Record were Romulus and Numa of which the first Founded the Roman City and State and the other Polished the Civil and Religious Orders of both in such a degree that the Original Institutions of these two Lawgivers continued as long as that Glorious State The next Heroe that came upon the Stage was Cyrus who freed His Country from their Servitude to the Medes erected the Persian Empire upon the ruins of the Assyrian adorned it with excellent Constitutions and Laws and extended it Westward by the Conquest of all the Lesser Asia and Lydia to the very Coasts of the Aegean Sea Whether the Picture of Cyrus drawn by Xenophon be after the life or only imaginary we may find in it the truest Character that can be given of Heroick Virtue And 't is certain His Memory was always sacred among the Persians though not prosecuted by Divine Honours because that Nation adored one Supream God without any Representation or Idol and in the next place the Sun to whom alone they offered Sacrifices Alexander was the next renowned in Story having founded the Grecian Monarchy by the entire Conquest of the Persian and extended it by the addition of Greece and Macedon But he attained not the esteem or appellation of an Heroe though He affected and courted it by His Mother's Stories of His Birth and by the Flatteries of the Priest and Oracle of Jupiter Ammon His pretence was justly excluded by His Intemperance in Wine in Anger and in Lust and more yet by His Cruelties and His Pride for true Honour has something in it so humorous as to follow commonly those who avoid or neglect it rather than those who seek and pursue it Besides He instituted no orders or frame of Government in the Kingdoms either of Macedon or Persia but rather corrupted and disordered those He found And seems to have owed the success of His Enterprises to the Councels and Conduct of His Fathers old Officers after whose disgrace and fall immediately succeeded that of his Fortune and his Life Yet he must be allowed to have much contributed to his own Glory and Fame by a great native Genius and unlimited Bounty and by the greatest
boldness of Enterprise scorn of Danger and fearlesness of Death that could be in any Mortal Man He was a Prodigy of Valour and of Fortune but whether his Virtues or his Faults were greatest is hard to be decided Caesar who is commonly esteemed to have been Founder of the Roman Empire seems to have possessed very eminently all the Qualities both native and acquired that enter into the Composition of an Heroe but failed of the Attribute or Honour because He overthrew the Laws of his own Country and Orders of his State and raised his greatness by the Conquest of his Fellow Citizens more than of their Enemies and after he came to the Empire lived not to perfect the frame of such a Government or atchieve such Conquests as he seems to have had in design These Four great Monarchies with the smaller Kingdoms Principalities and States that were swallowed up by their Conquests and Extent make the Subject of what is called Antient Story and are so excellently related by the many Greek and Latin Authors still extant and in common vogue so commented enlarged reduced into order of time and place by many more of the Modern Writers that they are known to all Men who profess to study or entertain themselves with Reading The Orders and Institutions of these several Governments their progress and duration their successes or decays their events and revolutions make the common Theams of Schools and Colledges the Study of Learned and the Conversation of Idle Men the Arguments of Histories Poems and Romances From the Actions and Fortunes of these Princes and Law-givers are drawn the common Examples of Virtue and Honour the Reproaches of Vice which are illustrated by the Felicities or Misfortunes that attend them From the Events and Revolutions of these Governments are drawn the usual Instructions of Princes and Statesmen and the Discourses and Reflections of the greatest Wits and Writers upon the Politicks From the Orders and Institutions the Laws and Customs of these Empires and States the Sages of Law and of Justice in all Countries endeavour to deduce the very common Laws of Nature and of Nations as well as the particular Civil or Municipal of Kingdoms and Provinces From these they draw their Arguments and Presidents in all Disputes concerning the pretended Excellencies or Defaults of the several sorts of Governments that are extolled or decried accused or defended Concerning the Rights of War and Peace of Invasion and Defence between Sovereign Princes as well as of Authority and Obedience of Prerogative and Liberty in Civil Contentions Yet the Stage of all these Empires and Revolutions of all these Heroick Actions and these famous Constitutions how great or how wise soever any of them are esteemed is but a limited compass of Earth that leaves out many vast Regions of the World the which though accounted barbarous and little taken notice of in Story or by any celebrated Authors yet have a right to come in for their Voice in agreeing upon the Laws of Nature and Nations for ought I know as well as the rest that have arrogated it wholly to themselves and besides in my Opinion there are some of them that upon enquiry will be found to have equalled or exceeded all the others in the wisdom of their Constitutions the extent of their Conquests and the duration of their Empires or States The famous Scene of the four great Monarchies was that midland part of the World which was bounded on the East by the River Indus and on the West by the Atlantick Ocean on the North by the River Oxus the Caspian and the Euxine Seas and the Danube on the South by the Mountain Atlas Aethiopia Arabia and from thence to the Mouth of Indus by the Southern Ocean 'T is true that Semiramis and Alexander are said to have conquered India but the first seems only to have subdued some parts of it that lie upon the Borders of that River and Alexander's Atchievements there seem rather like a Journey than a Conquest and though He pierced through the Country from Indus to Ganges yet He left even undiscovered the greatest parts of that mighty Region which by the Ancients was reported to contain an hundred and eighteen great and populous Nations and which for ought I know were never conquer'd but by the Tartars I reckon neither Scythia nor Arabia for parts of that ancient Scene of Action and Story for tho Cyrus and Darius entred the first yet they soon left it one with loss of His Honour and the other of his Life And for Arabia I neither find it was ever conquered or indeed well discovered or surveyed nor much more known than by the Commerce of their Spices and Perfumes I mean that part of it which is called Arabia Foelix and is environed on three sides by the Sea for the Northern Skirts that joyn to Syria have entred into the Conquests or Commerce of the four great Empires but that which seems to have secured the other is the stony and sandy Desarts through which no Armies can pass for want of Water Now if we consider the Map of the World as it lies at present before us since the discoveries made by the Navigations of these three last Centuries we shall easily find what vast Regions there are which have been left out of that ancient Scene on all sides And tho passing for barbarous they have not been esteemed worth the Pens of any good Authors and are known only by common and poor Relations of Traders Seamen or Travellers yet by all I have read I am inclined to believe that some of these out-lying Parts of the World however unknown by the Ancients and overlookt by the modern Learned may yet have afforded as much matter of Action and Speculation as the other Scene so much celebrated in Story I mean not only in their vast Extent and variety of Soiles and Clymats with their natural Productions but even in the excellent Constitutions of Laws and Customs the wise and lasting Foundations of States and Empires and the mighty Flights of Conquests that have risen from such Orders and Institutions Now because the first Scene is such a beaten Road and this so little known or traced I am content to take a short Survey of four great Scheams of Government or Empire that have sprung and grown to mighty heights lived very long and flourished much in these remote and as we will have it more ignoble Regions of the World Whereof one is at the farthest degree of our Eastern Longitude being the Kingdom of China The next is at the farthest Western which is that of Peru The third is the utmost of our Northern Latitude which is Scythia or Tartary And the fourth is Arabia which lies very far upon the Southern For that vast Continent of Africa that extends between Mount Atlas and the Southern Ocean Tho it be found to swarm in People to abound in Gold to contain many great Kingdoms and infinite smaller Principalities to be
the King and strict enquiries and questions both of Language and Learning and much Critick upon the several Writings produced by the several Pretenders and submitted to the Examiners This Degree may resemble that of Masters of Arts in our Colleges and is conferred with a new Badge belonging to it The third Degree may be compared to that of Doctors among us in any of our Sciences and is never conferred but in the Imperial City of Peking with great Forms and Solemnities after much examining and deliberation of the Persons appointed for that purpose and of this Degree there are never to be above three hundred at a time in the whole Empire besides such as are actually in the Magistracy or Government Who are all chosen out of the Persons that have commenced or attained this degree of Learning Upon the taking each Degree they repair to a Temple of Confutius which is erected in each City and adjoyns to the Colleges and there they perform the Worship and Ceremonies appointed in honour of His Memory as the great Prince or Hero of the Learned Of these Persons all their Councils and all their Magistracies are composed out of these are chosen all their Chief Officers and Mandarines both Civil and Military With these the Emperors and Viceroys of Provinces and Generals of Armies advise upon all great occasions and their Learning and Virtue make them esteemed more able for the execution and discharge of all publick Employments than the longest Practice and Experience in other Countries and when they come into Armies they are found braver and more generous in exposing their Lives upon all great occasions than the boldest Soldiers of their Troops Now for the Government it is absolute Monarchy there being no other Laws in China but the King's Orders and Commands and it is likewise Hereditary still descending to the next of Blood But all Orders and Commands of the King proceed thro' His Counsels and are made upon the Recommendation or Petition of the Council proper and appointed for that Affair so that all matters are debated determined and concluded by the several Councils and then upon their Advices or Requests made to the King they are ratify'd and signed by Him and so pass into Laws All great Offices of State are likewise conferred by the King upon the same Recommendations or Petitions of His several Councils so that none are preferred by the Humour of the Prince Himself nor by favour of any Minister by Flattery or Corruption but by force or appearance of Merit of Learning and of Vertue which observed by the several Councils gain their Recommendations or Petitions to the King The chief Officers are either those of State residing constantly at Court and by whom the whole Empire is governed Or the Provincial Officers Viceroys and Magistrates or Mandarines For the first there are in the Imperial City at Peking six several Councils or as some Authors affirm one great Council that divides it self into six smaller but distinct Branches Some difference is also made by Writers concerning the nature or the business of these Councils But that which seems most generally agreed is That the first of these six is a Council of State by whom all Officers through the whole Kingdom are chosen according to their Learning and Merit The Second is the Council of Treasury which has inspection into the whole Revenue and the Receits and Payments that are made in or out of it The third takes care of the Temples Offerings Feasts and Ceremonies belonging to them as likewise of Learning and the Schools or Colleges designed for it The Fourth is the Council of War which disposes of all Military Offices and Honours and all matters of War and Peace that is by the King's Command issued upon their representations The fifth takes care of all the Royal or Publick Buildings and of their Fleets And the sixth is a Council or Court of Justice or Judicature in all Causes both Civil and Criminal Each of these Councils has a President and two Assistants or chief Secretaries whereof one sits at His Right and the other on his Left Hand who digest and register the Debates and Orders of the Council And besides these there are in each Council Ten Counsellors By these Councils the whole Empire of China is govern'd thro all the several Kingdoms that compose it and they have in each Province particular Officers Intendants and Notaries from whom they receive constant Accounts and to whom they send constant Instructions concerning all Passages or Affairs of moment in any of the several Provinces of the Kingdom There are besides these six several smaller Councils as one for the Affairs of the King's Women for his Houshold and His Domestique Chancery or Justice But above all is the Council of the Colaos or chief Ministers who are seldom above five or six in number but Persons of the most consummate Prudence and Experience who after having passed with great Applause thro' the other Councils or Governments of Provinces are at last advanced to this supream Dignity and serve as a Privy Council or rather a Junto sitting with the Emperor Himself which is allowed to none of the others To these are presented all the Results or Requests of the other Councils and being by their advice approved they are by the Emperor signed and ratified and so dispatched These are always attended by some of the chiefest and most renowned Philosophers or Sages of the Kingdom who attend the Emperor and serve Him in receiving all Petitions and give their opinions upon them to the Emperor or the Colaos as also upon any matters of great moment and difficulty when they are consulted And these are chosen out of two Assemblies residing at Peking and consisting of sixty Men each but all choice Persons whose Wisdom and Vertue are generally known and applauded They are imployed in all matters of Learning and giving necessary Orders therein keeping all the publick Writings and ordering and digesting them registring all Laws and Orders of State and out of these are appointed by each succeeding King some persons to relate and register the Times and Actions of His Predecessor They are at their leisure much given to Poetry in which they compile the Praises of Vertuous Men and Actions Satyrs against Vice Inscriptions for Monuments and triumphal Arches and such like Compositions And lastly out of these as they grow in Esteem and Fame of Wisdom and Vertue are chosen and advanced by Degrees the Officers of State and Counsellors in the several Councils and none ever arrives to be a Colao that has not been of one of these two Assemblies Each particular Kingdom of the Empire has the same Councils or some very like them for the Government of that particular Province but there is besides in each a Surintendant sent more immediately from Court to inspect the course of Affairs A Censor of Justice and Manners without whose approval no capital Sentences are to be executed And a third
Officer imployed by the Empress in the nature of an Almoner whose business is only that of Charity and Relief of the Poor and distressed and setting free Prisoners upon small Debts or Offences There is besides in each Province a particular Council to take care of Learning and to appoint Rules and Examiners for the several Degrees thereof It were endless to enumerate all the excellent Orders of this State which seem contrived by a reach of Sense and Wisdom beyond what we meet with in any other Government of the World but by some few the rest may be judged Each Prince of the Royal Blood has a Revenue assigned Him and a City where he is bound to reside and never to stir out of it without the Emperor's leave All Degrees of People are distinguisht by their Habit and the several Officers by several Badges upon them And the Colour worn by the Emperor which is Yellow is never used by any other person whatsoever Every House has a Board over the Door wherein is written the Number Sex and Quality of the Persons living in it and to a certain number of Houses one is appointed to inspect the rest and take care that this be exactly done None is admitted to bear Office in any Province where He was born unless it be Military which is grounded upon the belief that in matters of Justice Men will be partial to their Friends but in those of War Men will fight best for their own Country None ever continues in any Office above three years unless upon a new Election and none put out for miscarriage in His Office is again admitted to any Imployment The two great hinges of all Governments Reward and Punishment are no where turned with greater care nor exercised with more Bounty and Severity Their Justice is rigorous upon all Offences against the Law but none more exemplary than upon corruption in Judges Besides this Inquisition is made into their ignorance and weakness and even into carelesness and rashness in their Sentences and as the first is punished with Death so these are with Dismission and Disgrace The Rewards of Honor besides those of advancement are conferred by Patents from the Emperor expressing Merits and granting Priviledges by Pillars of Marble with elegant and honorary Inscriptions And to merit extraordinary towards the Prince and Country even by erecting Temples offering Incense and appointing Priests for the service of them Agriculture is encouraged by so many special priviledges from the Crown and the Common Laws or Customs of the Country that whatever Wars happen the Tillers of the Ground are untouched as if they were sacred like Priests in other places so as no Country in the World was ever known to be so cultivated as the whole Kingdom of China Honor and Respect is no where paid to Nobility or Riches so much as it is here to Vertue and Learning which are equally regarded both by the Prince and the People And the advancement to Office of persons only for excelling in those Qualities prevents the Cankers of Envy and Faction that corrupt and destroy so many other Governments Every one seeking Preferment here only by Merit attributes to it that of other Men. Tho the King be the most absolute in the World since there are no other Laws in China but what He makes yet all Matters being first digested and represented by His Councils the Humors and Passions of the Prince enter not into the forms or conduct of the Government but His personal favours to Men or Women are distributed in the Preferments of His Houshold or out of the vast Revenue that is particularly applyed to it for support of the greatest Expence and Magnificence that appears in any Palace of the World So that it may truly be said that no King is better served and obeyed more honoured or rather adored and no People better govern'd nor with greater Ease and Felicity Upon these Foundations and Institutions by such Methods and Orders the Kingdom of China seems to be framed and policed with the utmost Force and Reach of Human Wisdom Reason and Contrivance and in Practice to excel the very Speculations of other Men and all those imaginary Scheams of the European Wits the Institutions of Xenophon the Republick of Plato the Utopias or Oceanas of our Modern Writers And this will perhaps be allowed by any that considers the Vastness the Opulence the Populousness of this Region with the Ease and Facility wherewith 't is govern'd and the length of time this Government has run The last is three times longer than that of the Assyrian Monarchy which was thirteen hundred years and the longest Period of any Government we meet with in Story The numbers of People and of their Forces the Treasures and Revenues of the Crown as well as Wealth and Plenty of the Subjects the Magnificence of their publick Buildings and Works would be incredible if they were not confirmed by the concurring Testimonies of Paulus Venetus Martinius Kercherus with several other relations in Italian Portuguese and Dutch either by Missionary Friers or Persons imploy'd thither upon Trade or Embassies upon that occasion Yet the whole Government is represented as a thing managed with as much Facility Order and Quiet as a common Family tho some Writers affirm the number of People in China before the last Tartar Wars to have been above two hundred Millions Indeed the Canals cut thro the Country or made by Conjunctions of Rivers are so infinite and of such lengths and so perpetually filled with Boats and Vessels of all kinds that one Writer believes there are near as many People in these and the Ships wherewith their Havens are filled who live upon the Water as those upon the Land 'T is true that as Physicians say the highest Degree of Health in a Body subjects it to the greatest danger and violence of some Disease so the perfection of this Government or Constitution has had the same Effect joyned with the accident of their Situation upon such a Neighbour as the Tartars For these by the hardness and poverty of their Country and their Lives are the boldest and the fiercest People in the World and the most enterprising On t'other side the Excellence of the Chinese Wit and Government renders them by great Ease Plenty and Luxury in time effeminate and thereby exposes them to frequent Attempts and Invasions of their savage Neighbours Three several times upon their Records the Tartars have conquered great parts of the Kingdom of China and after long establishments there have been expelled Till as we said before about the year 1650. they atchieved the compleat and entire Conquest of the whole Empire after a bloody War of above thirty years But the Force of this Constitution and Government appears in no circumstance or light so great as in this that it has waded safe thro so great Tempests and Inundations as six changes of Race among their Kings by Civil Wars and four Conquests by foreign and
Peru deduced its original from their great Heroes Mango Copac and His Wife and Sister Coya Mama who are said to have first appeared in that Country near a mighty Lake which is still sacred with them upon this occasion Before this time the People of these Countries are reported to have lived like the Beasts among them without any Traces of Orders Laws or Religion without other Food than from the Trees or the Herbs or what Game they could catch without further Provision than for present Hunger without any Cloathing or Houses but dwelt in Rocks or Caves or Trees to be secure from Wild Beasts or in Tops of Hills if they were in fear of fierce Neighbours When Mango Gopac and His Sister came first into these naked Lands as they were persons of excellent Shape and Beauty so they were adorned with such cloaths as continued afterwards the usual habit of the Ynca's by which Name they called themselves They told the People who came first about them that they were the Son and Daughter of the Sun and that their Father taking pity of the miserable Conditions of Mankind had sent them down to reclaim them from those bestial Lives and to instruct them how to live happily and safely by observing such Laws Customs and Orders as their Father the Sun had commanded these his Children to teach them The great Rule they first taught was That every Man should live according to Reason and consequently neither say nor do any thing to others that they were not willing others should say or do to them because it was against all common Reason to make one Law for our selves and another for other People And this was the great Principle of all their Morality In the next place that they should Worship the Sun who took Care of the whole World gave Life to all Creatures and made the Plants grow and the Herbs fit for Food to Maintain them and was so careful and so good as to spare no Pains of his own but to go round the World every day to inspect and provide for all that was upon it and had sent these his two Children down on purpose for the Good and Happiness of Mankind and to rule them with the same Care and Goodness that he did the World After this they taught them the Arts most necessary for Life as Mango-Capac to sow Mayz or the Common Indian Grain at certain Seasons to preserve it against others to build Houses against Inclemencies of the Air and Danger of Wild-beasts to distinguish themselves by Wedlock into several Families to cloath themselves so as to cover at least the shame of Nakedness to tame and nourish such Creatures as might be of common use and sustenance Coya Mama taught the Women to Spin and Weave both Cotton and certain coarse Wools of some Beasts amongst them With these Instructions and Inventions they were so much believed in all they said and adored for what they did and taught of common utility that they were followed by great numbers of People observ'd and obey'd like Sons of the Sun sent down from Heaven to instruct and to govern them Mango-Capac had in his Hand a rod of Gold about two Foot long and five Inches round He said that his Father the Sun had given it him and bid him when he travelled Northward from the Lake he should every time he rested strike this Wand down into the ground and where at the first stroke it should go down to the very top he should there build a Temple to the Sun and fix the Seat of his Government This fell out to be in the Vale of Cozco where he founded that City which was head of this great Kingdom of Peru. Here he divided his Company into two Colonies or Plantations and called one the high Casco and t'other the low and began here to be a Law giver to these People In each of these were at first a Thousand Families which he caused all to be Registred with the numbers in each This he did by Strings of several Colours and Knots of several Kinds and Colours upon them by which both accounts were kept of things and times and as much expressed of their minds as was necessary in a Government were neither Letters nor Money nor consequently Disputes or Avarice with their consequences ever entred He instituted Decurions thro' both these Colonies that is one over every Ten Families another over Fifty a third over a hundred a fourth over five Hundred and a fifth over a Thousand and to this last they gave the name of a Curaca or Governour Every Decurion was a Censor a Patron and a Judge or Arbiter in small Controversies among those under his charge They took care that every one cloathed themselves laboured and lived according to the orders given them by the Ynea's from their Father the Sun among which one was That none who could work should be idle more than to rest after labour and that none who could not work by Age Sickness or Invalidity should want but be maintain'd by the others pains These were so much observed that in the whole Empire of Peru and during the long race of the Ynca Kings no Beggar was ever known and no Woman ever so much as went to see a Neighbour but with their Work in their hands which they followed all the time the Visit lasted Upon this I remember a strain of refin'd Civility among them which was that when any Woman went to see another of equal or ordinary Birth she worked at her own Work in the others House but if she made a Visit to any of the Palla's which was the name by which they called all the Women of the true Royal Blood as Ynca's was that of the Men then they immediately desired the Palla to give them a piece of her own Work and the Visit passed in working for her Idleness sentenced by the Decurions was punished by so many stripes in publick and the disgrace was more sensible than the pain Every Colony had one supreme Judge to whom the lower Decurions remitted great and difficult cases or to whom in such case the Criminals appealed But every Decurion that concealed any Crime of those under his Charge above a day and a night became guilty of it and lyable to the same punishment There were Laws or Orders likewise against Theft Mutilations Murthers Disobedience to Officers and Adulterers for every Man was to have one lawful Wife but had the Liberty of keeping other Women as he could The Punishment of all Crimes was either Corporal Pains or Death but commonly the last upon these two reasons which they gave first That all Crimes whether great or small were of the same nature and deserved the same punishment if they were committed against the Divine Commands which were sent them down from the Sun Next that to punish any Man in his Possessions or Charges and leave him alive and in strength and liberty was to leave an ill Man more
own Soldiers together for several days and then incorporated them into the Body of his Empire and gave to each of them Cloathes to Wear and Corn to Sow By these ways and such Heroick Vertues and by the length of his Reign he so far extended his Dominions as to divide them into four Provinces over each whereof he appointed an Ynca to be a Viceroy having many Sons grown fit to Command and in each of them established three Supream Councils the first of Justice the second of War and the third of the Revenue of which an Ynca was likewise President which continued ever after At the end of a long and adored Reign Mango-Copac fell into the last Period of his Life upon the approach whereof he called together all his Children and Grand-children with his eldest Son to whom he left his Kingdom And told them that for his own part he was going to repose himself with his Father the Sun from whom he came that he advised and charged them all to go on in the paths of Reason and Virtue which he had taught them till they followed him the same Journey that by this course only they would prove themselves to be true Sons of the Sun and be as such honored and esteemed He gave the same Charge more especially and more earnestly to the Ynca his Successor and commanded him to govern his People according to his Example and the Precepts he had received from the Sun and to do it always with Justice Mercy Piety Clemency and Care of the Poor and when he the Prince should go in time to Rest with his Father the Sun that he should give the same Instructions and Exhortations to his Successor And this Form was accordingly used in all the Successions of the Race of the Ynca's which lasted eight hundred years with the same Orders and the greatest Felicity that could be of any State I Will say nothing of the greatness magnificence and riches of their Buildings Palaces or Temples especially those of the Sun of the Splendour of their Court their Triumphs after Victories their Huntings and Feasts their Military Exercises and Honours But as testimonies of their Grandeur mention only two of their High-Ways whereof one was Five Hundred Leagues plain and levelled through Mountains Rocks and Valleys so that a Carriage might drive through that whole length without difficulty Another very long and large paved all with cut or squared Stone fenced with low Walls on each side and set with Trees whose Branches gave Shade and the Fruits Food to all that passed I shall end this Survey of their Government with one Remarque upon their Religion which is that tho' the Vulgar Worshipped only the Sun yet the Amautas who were their Sages or Philosophers taught that the Sun was only the great Minister of Pachacamac whom they adored in the first place and to whom a great and sumptuous Temple was Dedicated This word is interpreted by the Spaniards Animador del Mundo or He that animates or enlivens the World and seems to be yet a more refin'd Notion of the Deity than that of the Chineses who adored the Spirit and Soul of the World By this principle of their Religion as all the others of their Government and Policy it must I think be allowed that Human Nature is the same in these remote as well as the other more known and celebrated parts of the World That the different Governments of it are framed and cultivated by as great reaches and strength of Reason and of Wisdom as any of ours and some of their Frames less subject to be shaken by the Passions Factions and other Corruptions to which those in the middle Scene of Europe and Asia have been so often and so much exposed That the same Causes produce every where the fame Effects and that the same Honours and Obedience are in all places but Consequences or Tributes paid to the same Heroick Vertue or Transcendent Genius in what parts soever or under what Clymates of the World it fortunes to appear SECT IV. THE Third Survey I proposed to make in this Essay upon Heroick Vertue was that of the Northern Region which lies without the Bounds of the Euxin and Caspian Seas the River Oxus to the East and the Danube to the West which by the Greeks and Romans was called all by one general Name of Scythia and little known to any Princes or Subjects of the four great Monarchies otherwise than by the defeats or disgraces received in their Expeditions against these fierce Inhabitants of those barren Countries Such was the fatal Overthrow of Cyrus and his Army by the Eastern Scythians and the shameful Flight of Darius from the Western This vast Region which extends from the North-East Ocean that bounds Cataya and China to the North-West that washes the Coasts of Norway Jutland and some Northern Parts of Germany tho' comprised by the Ancients under the common name of Scythia was distinguished into the Asiatick and the European which were divided by the River Tanais and the Mountains out of which it rises Those numerous Nations may be called the Eastern Scythians who ly on that side of the Tanais or at least the Volga and those the Western that lye on this Among the first the Massagetae were the most known or talkt of by the ancient Writers and among the last the Getae and the Sarmatae The first is now comprehended under the general name of great Tartary and the second under those of the lesser Tartary Muscovy Poland Sueden and Denmark the two last styling themselves Kings of the Goths and Vandals How far this vast Territory is inhabited Northward by any Race of Mankind I think none pretends to know nor from how remote Corners of those Frozen Mountains some of those fierce Nations first crept out whose Force and Arms have been so known and felt by all the rest of what was of Old called the Habitable World Whether it be that the course of Conquest has run generally from the North to the South as from the harder upon the softer or from the poorer upon the richer Nations because Men commonly Attacque with greater fierceness and courage than they Defend being in one spirited by desire and in the other usually damped by Fear I cannot tell but certain it is how Celebrated soever the four great Monarchies have been by the Writings of so many famous Authors who have Eternized their Fame and thereby their own yet there is no part of the World that was ever Subject to Assyrian Persian Greek or Roman Empires except perhaps some little Islands that has not been Ravaged and Conquered by some of those Northern Nations whom they reckoned and despised as Barbarous Nor where new Empires Kingdoms Principalities or Governments have not been by them erected upon the ruins of the Old which may justly Mortifie the Pride of Mankind the Depths of their Reasonings the Reach of their Politicks the Wisdom of their Laws and Force of their Discipline
and may be allowed for a great and undisputed Triumph of Nature over Art 'T is agreed in Story that the Scythians Conquered the Medes during the period of that Race in the Assyrian Empire and were Masters of Asia for fifteen years till they returned home upon Domestick Occasions That Cyrus was beaten and slain by their Fury and Revenge under the leading of a Woman whose Wit and Conduct made a great Figure in Ancient Story That the Romans were defeated by the Parthians who were of the Scythian Race But the great Hero of the Eastern Scythians or Tartars I esteem to have been Tamerlane and whether he was Son of a Shepherd or a King to have been the greatest Conqueror that was ever in the World at least that appears upon any present Records of Story His Atchievments were great upon China where he subdued many Provinces and forced their King to such Conditions of a Peace as he was content to impose He made War against the Muscovites with the same success and partly by force partly by consent gained a passage through their Territories for that vast Army which he led against Bajazet then the Terror of the World He conquered this proud Turk and his whole Empire as far as the Hellespont which he crossed and made a Visit to the poor Greek Emperor at Constantinople who had sent to make Allyance with him upon his first Invasion of Bajazet at whose Mercy this Prince then almost lay with the small remainders of the Grecian Empire Nothing was greater or more Heroical in this Victorious Tamerlane than the Faith and Honour wherewith he observed this Allyance with the Greeks For having been received at Constantinople with all the Submissions that could be made him having viewed and admired the Greatness and Structure of that Noble City and said it was fit to make the Seat for the Empire of the World and having the offer of it freely made him by the Greeks to possess it for his own yet after many Honours exchanged between these two Princes he left this City in the freedom and the Greek Emperor in the Possessions he found them went back into Asia and in his return Conquered Syria Persia and India where the great Moguls have ever since boasted to be the Race of Tamerlane After all these Conquests he went home and passed the rest of his Age in his own Native Kingdom and dyed a fair and natural Death which was a strain of Felicity as well as Greatness beyond any of the Conquerors of the Four Renowned Monarchies of the World He was without question a Great and Heroick Genius of great Justice exact Discipline generous Bounty and much Piety adoring one God though he was neither Christian Jew nor Mahometan and deserved a nobler Character than could be allowed by modern Writers to any Person of a Nation so unlike themselves The Turks were another Race of these Eastern Scythians their Original Country being placed by some upon the North-East by others upon the North-West-Coast of the Caspian Sea and perhaps both may have contributed to furnish such numbers as have over-run so great a part of Asia Europe and Africa But I shall have occasion to say more of them and their Conquests in the next Section That part of Scythia that lyes between the two Rivers of the Volga and Boristhenes whereof the one runs into the Caspian and t'other into the Euxine Sea was the Seat of the Getae whom Herodotus mentions as then known by the name of Getae Immortales because they believed that when they dyed they should go to Zamolxis and enjoy a new Life in another World at least such of them as lived according to his Orders and Institutions who had been a great Prince or Law-Giver among them From this Name of Getae came that of Gothae and this part of Scythia in its whole Northern extent I take to have been the vast Hive out of which issued so many mighty Swarms of Barbarous Nations who under the several Names of Goths Vandals Alans Lombards Huns Bulgars Francs Saxons and many others broke in at several times and places upon the several Provinces of the Roman Empire like so many Tempests tore in pieces the whole Fabrick of that Government framed many new ones in its Room changed the Inhabitants Language Customs Laws the usual Names of Places and of Men and even the very Face of Nature where they came and Planted new Nations and Dominions in their Room Thus Italy after many Spoils and Invasions of the Goths and Vandals came to be possessed by the Lombards Pannonia by the Huns Thracia by the Bulgars the Southern parts of Spain or Andaluzia by the Vandals the East or Catalonia by the Catti and Alani the rest of that Continent by the Goths Gaul was subdued by the Francs and Britain by the Saxons both which Nations are thought to have come anciently from the more Northern Regions and seated themselves in those parts of Germany that were afterwards called by their Names from whence they proceeded in time to make their later Conquests The Scutes who Conquered Scotland and Ireland and possessed them under the Names of Albin Scutes and Irin Scutes I guess to have come from Norway and to have retained more of the ancient Scythians before the Goths came into those parts both in their Language and Habit as that of Mantles and in the Custom of removing from one part to another according to the Seasons or Conveniences of Pasture The Normans that came into France I take likewise to be a later Race from Norway but after the Gothick Orders and Institutions had gained more Footing in that Province The Writers of those Times content themselves to lay the Disgraces and Ruins of their Countries upon the numbers and fierceness of these Savage Nations that invaded them or upon their own dis-unions and disorders that made way for so easie Conquests But I cannot believe that the strange Successes and Victorious Progresses of these Northern Conquerors should have been the Effect only of Tumultuary Arms and Numbers or that Governments erected by them and which have lasted so long in Europe should have been framed by unreasonable or unthinking Men. 'T is more likely that there was among them some Force of Order some Reach of Conduct as well as some Principle of Courage above the common Strain that so strange Adventures could not be atchieved but by some enchanted Knights That which first gave me this thought was the Reflection upon those Verses in Lucan Populus quos despicit Arctos Faelices errore suo quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget lethi metus inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona viris animique capaces Mortis ignavum rediturae parcere vitae By this passage it appears that sixteen hundred years ago those Northern People were distinguish'd from all others by a fearlesness of Death grounded upon the belief of another Life which made them despise the care of preserving this Whether
Song or Epicedium of Regner Ladbrog one of their famous Kings which He composed in the Runick Language about eight hundred years ago after He was mortally stung by a Serpent and before the Venom seized upon His Vitals The whole Sonnet is recited by Olaus Wormius in his Literatura Runica who has very much deserved from the Common-wealth of Learning and is very well worth reading by any that love Poetry and to consider the several stamps of that Coyn according to several Ages and Climates But that which is extraordinary in it is that such an alacrity or pleasure in dying was never expressed in any other Writing nor imagined among any other People The Two Stanzaes are thus translated into Latin by Olaus Stanza XXV Pugnavimus ensi us Hoc ridere me facit semper Quod Balderi Patris Scamna Parata scio in aula Bibemus Cerevisiam Ex concavis crateribus craniorum Non gemit vir fortis contra mortem Magnifici in Odini domibus Non venio desperabundus Verbis ad Othini aulam Stanza XXIX Fert animus finire Invitant me Dysae Quas ex Odini aula Othinus mihi misit Laetus cerevisiam cum Asis In summa sede bibam Vitae elapsae sunt horae Ridens Moriar I am deceived if in this Sonnet and a following Ode of Scallogrim which was likewise made by Him after He was condemned to die and deserved his Pardon for a Reward there be not a vein truly Poetical and in its kind Pindarick taking it with the allowance of the different Climats Fashions Opinions and Languages of such distant Countries I will not trouble my self with more passages out of these Runick Poems concerning this Superstitious Principle which is so perfectly represented in these with the possession it had taken of the Noblest Souls among them for such this Lodbrog appears to have been by His perpetual Wars and Victories in those Northern Continents and in England Scotland and Ireland But I will add a Testimony of it which was given me at Nimeguen by Count Oxenstern the first of the Suedish Ambassadors in that Assembly In discourse upon this Subject and confirmation of this Opinion having been general among the Goths of those Countries He told me there was still in Sueden a place which was a memorial of it and was called Odinshall That it was a great Bay in the Sea encompassed on three sides with steep and ragged Rocks that in the Time of the Gothick Paganism men that were either sick of Diseases they esteemed mortal or incurable or else grown invalid with Age and thereby past all military Action and fearing to dye meanly and basely as they esteemed it in their Beds they usually caused themselves to be brought to the nearest part of these Rocks and from thence threw themselves down into the Sea hoping by the boldness of such a violent Death to renew the Pretence of Admission into the Hall of Odin which they had lost by failing to dye in Combat and by Arms. What effect such a Principle suck'd in with instruction and education and well believed must have upon the Passions and Actions of a People naturally strong and brave is easie to conceive and how far it went beyond all the strains of the boldest and firmest Philosophy for this reached no farther than Constancy in Death or Indifferency in the Opinion of that or of Life but the other infused a Scorn of Life and a desire of Death nay fear and aversion even for a natural Death with pursuit and longing for a violent one contrary to the general Opinions of all other Nations so as they took Delight in War and Dangers as others did in Hunting or such active Sports and fought as much for the hopes of Death as of Victory and found as much pleasure in the supposed Advantages and Consequences of one as in the real Enjoyments of the other This made them perpetually in New Motions or Designs fearless and fierce in the Execution of them and never caring in Battle to preserve their Lives longer than to increase the Slaughter of their Enemies and thereby their own Renown here and Felicity hereafter For my part when I consider the force of this Principle I wonder not at the effects of it their numerous Conquests nor immensity of Countries they subdued nor that such strange Adventures should have been finished by such enchanted Men. But when Christianity introduced among them gave an end to these Delusions the restless humour of perpetual Wars and Action was likewise allay'd and they turned their Thoughts to the establishment of their several Kingdoms in the Provinces they had subdued and chosen for their Seats and applyed themselves to the Orders and Constitutions of their Civil or Political Governments Their Principle of Learning was That all they had among them was applyed to the Knowledge and Distinction of Seasons by the course of the Stars and to the prognosticks of Weather or else to the Praises of Vertue which consisted among them only in Justice to their own Nation and Valour against their Enemies and the rest was employed in displaying the brave and heroick Exploits of their Princes and Leaders and the Prowess and Conquests of their Nation All their Writings were composed in Verse which were called Runes or Viises and from thence the Term of Wise came And these Poets or Writers being esteemed the Sages among them were as such always employed in the attendance upon their Princes both in Courts and Camps being used to advise in their Conduct and to Record their Actions and Celebrate their Praises and Triumphs The Traces of these Customs have been seen within the Compass of this very Age both in Hungary and Ireland where at their Feasts it was usual to have these kind of Poets entertain the Company with their rude Songs or Panegyricks of their Ancestors bold Exploits among which the Number of Men that any of them had slain with their own hands was the chief ingredient in their praises By these they rewarded the Prowess of the old Men among them and inflamed the Courage of the young to equal the boldness and atchievements of those that had travelled before them in these paths of Glory The Principle of Politick or Civil Government in these Northern Nations seems derived from that which was Military among them When a new Swarm was upon the Wing they chose a Leader or General for the Expedition and at the same time the chief Officers to command the several Divisions of their Troops these were a Council of War to the General with whom they advised in the whole progress of their Enterprise but upon great occasions as a Pitch Battle any military exploit of great difficulty and danger the choice of a Country to fix their Seat or the conditions of Peace that were proposed they Assembled their whole Troops and Consulted with all the Souldiers or People they commanded This Tacitus observes to have been in use among the German Princes in His
persecuted in the Eastern Provinces by some of the Greek Emperors of the same Faith with the Western or Roman Church made easie turns to the Mahumetan Doctrines that professed Christ to have been so Great and so Divine a Prophet which was all in a manner that they themselves allowed Him The cruel Persecutions of other Grecian Princes against those Christians that would not admit the use of Images made great Numbers of them go over to the Saracens who abhorred that Worship as much as themselves The Jews were allured by the profession of Unity in the Godhead which they pretended not to find in the Christian Faith and by the great Honor that was paid by the Saracens to Moses as a Prophet and a Law giver sent immediately from God into the World The Pagans met with an Opinion of the old Gentilism in that of Predestination which was the Stoick Principle and that whereinto unhappy Men commonly fell and sought for Refuge in the uncertain Conditions or Events of Life under Tyrannical and Cruel Governments So as some Roman Authors observe that the Reigns of Tiberius Caligula and Nero made more Stoicks in Rome than the Precepts of Zeno Chrysippus and Cleanthes The great Extent and Power of the Persian Branch or Empire continued long among the Saracens but was over-run at length by the Turks first and then by the Tartars under Tamerlane whose Race continued there till the time of Ishmael from whom the present Sophies are derived This Ishmael was an Enthusiast or at least a Pretender to new Revelations in the Mahometan Religion He professed to Reform both their Doctrines and their Manners and taught That Haly alone of Mahomet's Followers ought to be owned and believed as His True Successor which made the Persians ever since esteem the Turks for Hereticks as the Turks do them He gained so many Followers by his new and refined Principles or Professions of Devotion that he made himself King of Persia by the same way that the Xeriffs came to be Kings of Morocco and Fez about Charles the Fifth's time and Cromwel to be Protector of England and Oran Zeb to be great Mogul in our Age which were the four great Dominions of the Fanatick Strain The Arabian Branch of the Saracen Empire after a long and mighty growth in Aeygpt and Arabia seems to have been at its Height under the great Almanzor who was the illustrious and renowned Heroe of this Race and must be allowed to have as much excelled and as eminently in Learning Vertue Piety and Native Goodness as in Power in Valour and in Empire Yet this was extended from Arabia through Aegypt and all the Northern Tracts of Africa as far as the Western Ocean and over all the considerable Provinces of Spain For it was in his Time and by his Victorious Ensigns that the Gothick Kingdom in Spain was Conquered and the Race of those Famous Princes ended in Rodrigo All that Country was reduced under the Saracen Empire except the Mountains of Leon and Oviedo and were afterwards divided into several Moorish Kingdoms whereof some lasted to the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella Nay the Saracen Forces after the Conquest of Spain invaded the Southern parts of France and proceeded with the same success as far as Tours till they were beaten and expelled by Charles Martel who by those exploits raised his Renown so high as to give him the Ambition of leaving the Kingdom of France to his own Line in Pepin and Charlemain by the desposition and extinction of the first Race which had lasted from Pharamond I do not remember ever to have read a greater and a nobler Character of any Prince than of this Great Almanzor in some Spanish Authors or Translators of his Story out of the Arabian Tongue wherein the Learning then remaining in the World flourish'd most and that of ancient Greece as it had been translated into their Language so it seems to have been by the Acuteness and Excellency of those more Southern Wits in some parts very much improved This Kingdom continued Great under the Caliphs of Aegypt who degenerating from the Example and Vertues of Almanzor came to be hated of their Subjects and to secure themselves from them by a mighty Guard of Circassian Slaves These were bought young from the Country now called Mengrelia between the Euxine and Caspian Seas the ancient Seat of the Amazons and which has in past and present times been observed to produce the bravest Bodies of Men and most beautiful of Women in all the Eastern Regions These Slaves were called Mamalues when they came into Aegypt and were brought up with care and in all Exercises and Discipline that might render them the most martial Troops or Bands of Soldiers that could any where be composed and so they proved The commander of this mighty band or guard of Mamulucks was called their Sultan who was absolute over them as the General of an Army is in time of War They served for some time to support the Government of the Caliphs and enslave the Aegyptians till one of the Sultans finding his own Power and the general disesteem wherein the Caliph was fallen by the effeminate Softness or Luxury of his Life deposed him first then slew him and took upon Himself the Government of Aegypt under the name of Sultan and reigned by the sole Force and Support of his Mamalue Troops which were continually increased by the Merchandise and Transportation of Circassian Slaves This Government lasted with great Terror in Aegypt between two and three hundred Years during which time the new Sultans were elected upon the Death or Deposing of the Old by the Choice of the Mamalucs and always out of their own Bands The Sons of the Deceased Sultans enjoyed the Estates and Riches left by their Fathers but by the Constitutions of the Government no Son of a Sultan was ever either to succeed or even to be elected Sultan So that in this contâ—â—ry to all others ever known in the World to be born of a Prince was a certain and unalterable Exclusion from the Kingdom and none was ever to be chosen Sultan that had not been actually sold for a Slave brought from Circassia and trained up a private Souldier in the Mamaluc Bands Yet of so base Metal were formed several Men who made mighty Figures in their Age and no Nation made so brave a resistance against the growing Empire of the Turks as these Mamalues did under their Sultans till they were conquered by Selim after a long War which looked in Story like the Combat of some fierce Tyger with a Savage Boar while the Country that is wasted by them are Lookers on and little concerned under whose Dominion and Cruelty they fall It is not well agreed amongst Authors whether the Turks were first called into Asia by the Greek or the Persian Emperors but 't is by all that falling down in great Numbers they revolted from the Assistance of their Friends set up for themselves
of the Janizaries in so many Encounters and such an universal Discouragement of their Troops that could no where withstand the German Arms and Bravery if upon the taking of Belgrade the Emperor had been at the Head of the Forces then in his Service united under one great Commander and without dependance upon the several Princes by whom they were raised I do not see what could have hindred them from conquering all before them in that open Country of Bulgaria and Romania nor from taking Constantinople it self upon the course of an easie War in such a Decline of the Turkish Empire with so weak and dispirited Troops as those that remained a Treasure so exhausted a Court so divided and such a general Consternation as appear'd in that great and multuous City upon these Occasions But God Almighty had not decreed any so great Revolution either for the Ruin or Advantage of Christendom and seems to have left both Empires at a Bay and not likely to make any great Enterprizes on either side but rather to fall into the Designs of a Peace which may probably leave Hungary to the Possession as well as Right of the House of Austria and the Turks in a condition of giving no great Fears or Dangers in our Age to the rest of Christendom Although the Mahumetan Empires were not raised like others upon the Foundations or by the Force of Heroic Vertue but rather by the Practices of a subtile Man upon the Simplicity of credulous People yet the Growth of them has been influenced by several Princes in whom some Beams at least of that Sun have shined such as Almanzor Saladine Ottoman and Solyman the Great And because I have named the most Heroick Persons of that Sect it will be but Justice to Nobler Nations to mention at the same time those who appear to have shined the brightest in their several Ages or Countries the Lustre of whose Vertues as well as Greatness has been sullied with the fewest noted Blemishes or Defaults and who for deserving well of their own Countries by their Actions and of Mankind by their Examples have eternized their Memories in the true Records of Fame which is ever just to the Dead how partial soever it may be to the Living from the forced Applauses of Power or fulsom Adulations of servile Men. Such as these were among the ancient Grecians Epimanondas Pericles and Agesilaus Of the Old Roman State the first Scipio Marcellus and Paulus Aemilius Of the Roman Emperors Augustus Trajan and Marcus Antoninus Among the Goths Alaric and Theoderic Of the Western Emperors Charlemain Frederic Barbarossa and Charles the Fifth Of the French Nation Pharamond Charles Martel and Henry the Fourth who began three of their Noblest Races Of the â—uedes Gustavus Adolphus And of our own Richard the First the Black Prince and Harry the Fifth To these I may add seven Famous Captains or smaller Princes whose Exploits and Vertues may justly allow them to be ranked with so great Kings and Emperors Aetius and Bellisarius the two last Great Commanders of the Roman Armies after the Division and Decay of that Mighty State who set up the last Trophies and made the bravest Defences against the Numbers and Fury of those Barbarous Nations that invaded and after their time tore in pieces that whole Empire George Castriot commonly call'd Scanderbeg Prince of Epire and Huniades Viceroy of Hungaria who were two most Victorious Captains and excellent Men the true Champions of Christendom whilest they lived and Terror of the Turks who with small Forces held at a Bay for so many years all the Powers of the Ottoman Empire Ferdinand Gonzalvo that Noble Spaniard worthily Surnamed the Great Captain who by his sole Prowess and Conduct Conquered a Crown for his Master which he might have worn for himself if his Ambition had been equal to his Courage and Vertues William Prince of Orange who restored the Belgick Liberties and was the Founder of their State esteemed generally the best and wisest Commander of his Age and who at the sudden point of his Death as well as in the course of his Life gave such Testimonies of his being a true Lover of the People and Country he Govern'd Alexander Farnese Prince of Parma who by his Wisdom Courage and Justice recovered Ten of the Seventeen Provinces that were in a manner lost to the Crown of Spain made two famous Expeditions for relief of his Confederates into the Heart of France and seemed to revive the ancient Roman Vertue and Discipline in the World and to bring the noble Genius of Italy to appear once more upon the Stage Who-ever has a mind to trace the Paths of Heroick Vertue which lead to the Temple of True Honour and Fame need seek them no further than in the Stories and Examples of those Illustrious Persons here Assembled And so I leave this Crown of never-fading Lawrel in full View of such great and noble Spirits as shall deserve it in this or in succeeding Ages Let them win it and wear it ESSAY IV. Of Poetry THE Two common Shrines to which most Men offer up the Application of their Thoughts and their Lives are Profit and Pleasure and by their Devotions to either of these they are vulgarly distinguished into Two Sects and called either Busie or Idle Men. Whether these Terms differ in meaning or only in sound I know very well may be disputed and with appearance enough since the Covetous Man takes perhaps as much Pleasure in his Gains as the Voluptuous does in his Luxury and would not pursue his Business unless he were pleased with it upon the last Account of what he most wishes and desires nor would care for the encrease of his Fortunes unless he proposed thereby that of his Pleasures too in one kind or other so that Pleasure may be said to be his end whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no. Much ado there has been many Words spent or to speak with more respect to the antient Philosophers many Disputes have been raised upon this Argument I think to little purpose and that all has been rather an Exercise of Wit than an Enquiry after Truth and all Controversies that can never end had better perhaps never begin The best is to take Words as they are most commonly spoken and meant like Coyn as it most currantly passes without raising scruples upon the weight or the allay unless the cheat or the defect be gross and evident Few things in the World or none will bear too much refining a Thred too fine Spun will easily break and the Point of a Needle too finely Filed The usual acceptation takes Profit and Pleasure for two different things and not only calls the Followers or Votaries of them by several Names of Busie and of Idle Men but distinguishes the Faculties of the mind that are Conversant about them calling the Operations of the first Wisdom and of the other Wit which is a Saxon Word that
upon the first thought that a sort of Style so regular and so difficult should have grown in use before the other so easy and so loose But if we consider what the first end of Writing was it will appear probable from Reason as well as Experience For the True and General End was but the help of Memory in preserving that of Words and of Actions which would otherwise have been lost and soon vanish away with the Transitory Passage of Human Breath and Life Before the Discourses and Disputes of Philosphers began to busie or amuse the Grecian Wits there was nothing Written in Prose but either Laws some short Sayings of Wise men or some Riddles Parables or Fables wherein were couched by the Antients many Strains of Natural or Moral Wisdom and Knowledge and besides these some short Memorials of Persons Actions and of Time Now 't is obvious enough to conceive how much easier all such Writings should be Learnt and Remembred in Verse than in Prose not only by the Pleasure of Measures and of Sounds which gives a great Impression to Memory but by the order of Feet which makes a great Facility of Tracing one Word after another by knowing what sort of Foot or Quantity must necessarily have preceded or followed the Words we retain and desire to make up This made Poetry to necessary before Letters were Invented and so convenient afterwards and shews that the great Honor and general Request wherein iâ— has always been has not proceeded only from the Pleasure and Delight but likewise from the Usefulness and Profit of Poetical Writings This leads me naturally to the Subjects of Poetry which have been generally Praise Instruction Story Love Grief and Reproach Praise was the Subject of all the Songs and Psalms mentioned in Holy Writ of the Hymns of Orpheus of Homer and many others Of the Carmina Secularia in Rome Composed all and Designed for the Honor of their Gods Of Pindar Stesichorus and Tyrtaus in the Praises of Virtue or Virtuous Men. The Subject of Job is Instruction concerning the Attributes of God and the Works of Nature Those of Simonides Phocilides Theognis and several other of the smaller Greek Poets with what passes for Pythagoras are Instructions in Morality The first Book of Hesiod and Virgils Georgicks in Agriculture and Lucretius in the deepest natural Philosophy Story is the proper Subject of Heroick Poems as Homer and Virgil in their inimitable Iliads and Aeneids And Fable which is a sort of Story in the Metamorphosis of Ovid. The Lyrick Poetry has been chiefly Conversant about Love tho' turned often upon Praise too and the Vein of Pastorals and Eclogues has run the same course as may be observed in Theocritus Virgil and Horace who was I think the first and last of true Lyrick Poets among the Latins Grief has been always the Subject of Elegy and Reproach that of Satyr The Dramatick Poesy has been Composed of all these but the chief end seems to have been Instruction and under the disguise of Fables or the pleasure of Story to shew the Beauties and the Rewards of Virtue the Deformitys and Misfortunes or Punishment of Vice By Examples of both to Encourage one and Deter Men from the other to Reform ill Customs Correct ill Manners and Moderate all violent Passions These are the general Subjects of both Parts tho' Comedy give us but the Images of common Life and Tragedy those of the greater and more extraordinary Passions and Actions among Men. To go further upon this Subject would be to tread so beaten Paths that to Travel in them only raises Dust and is neither of Pleasure nor of Use. For the Changes that have happened in Poetry I shall observe one Antient and the others that are Modern will be too Remarkable in the Declines or Decays of this great Empire of Wit The first Change of Poetry was made by Translating it into Prose or cloathing it in those loose Robes or common Veils that disguised or covered the true Beauty of its Features and Exactness of its Shape This was done first by Aesop in Greek but the Vein was much more antient in the Eastern Regions and much in Vogue as we may observe in the many Parables used in the old Testament as well as in the New And there is a Book of Fables of the sort of Aesop's Translated out of Persian and pretended to have been so into that Language out of the antient Indian But though it seems Genuine of the Eastern Countries yet I do not take it to be so old nor to have so much Spirit as the Greek The next Succession of Poetry in Prose seems to have been in the Milesian Tales which were a sort of little Pastoral Romances and though much in request in old Greece and Rome yet we have no Examples that I know of them unless it be the Longi Pastoralia which gives a Tast of the great Delicacy and Pleasure that was found so generally in those sort of Tales The last kind of Poetry in Prose is that which in latter Ages has over-run the World under the Name of Romances which tho' it seems Modern and a Production of the Gothick Genius yet the Writing is antient The remainders of Petronius Arbiter seem to be of this kind and that which Lucian calls his True History But the most antient that passes by the Name is Heliodorus Famous for the Author 's choosing to lose his Bishoprick rather than disown that Child of his Wit The true Spirit or Vein of antient Poetry in this kind seems to shine most in Sir Philip Sidney whom I esteem both the Greatest Poet and the Noblest Genius of any that have left Writings behind them and published in ours or any other modern Language a Person born capable not only of forming the greatest Idoeaes but of leaving the noblest Examples if the length of his Life had been equal to the excellence of his Wit and his Virtues With him I leave the Discourse of antient Poety and to discover the Decays of this Empire must turn to that of the modern which was introduced after the Decays or rather Extinction of the old as if true Poetry being dead an Apparition of it walked about This mighty Change arrived by no smaller Occasions nor more ignoble Revolutions than those which destroyed the antient Empire and Government of Rome and Erected so many New ones upon their Ruines by the Invasions and Conquests or the general Inundations of the Goths Vandals and other Barbarous or Northern Nations upon those Parts of Europe that had been subject to the Romans After the Conquests made by Caesar upon Gaul and the nearer Parts of Germany which were continued and enlarged in the times of Augustus and Tiberius by their Lieutenants or Generals great Numbers of Germans and Gauls resorted to the Roman Armies and to the City it self and habituated themselves there as many Spaniards Syrians Graecians had done before upon the Conquest of those Countries This
all from Sylla to Augustus Mecaenas was the wisest Counsellour the truest Friend both of His Prince and His Country the best Governor of Rome the happiest and ablest Negociator the best Judge of Learning and Vertue the choicest in His Friends and thereby the happiest in His Conversation that has been known in Story and I think to His Conduct in Civil and Agrippa's in Military Affairs may be truly ascribed all the Fortunes and Greatness of Augustus so much celebrated in the World For Lucretius Virgil and Horace they deserve in my Opinion the Honour of the greatest Philosophers as well as the best Poets of their Nation or Age. The two first besides what looks like something more than Human in their Poetry were very great Naturalists and admirable in their Morals And Horace besides the Sweetness and Elegancy of his Lyricks appears in the rest of His Writings so great a Master of Life and of true Sense in the Conduct of it that I know none beyond him It was no mean strain of His Philosophy to refuse being Secretary to Augustus when so great an Emperor so much desired it But all the different Sects of Philosophers seem to have agreed in the Opinion of a wise Man's abstaining from Publick Affairs which is thought the meaning of Pythagoras's Precept To abstain from Beans by which the Affairs or publick Resolutions in Athens were managed They thought that sort of Business too gross and material for the abstracted fineness of their Speculations They esteemed it too sordid and too artificial for the cleanness and simplicity of their Manners and Lives They would have no part in the Faults of a Government and they knew too well that the Nature and Passions of Men made them incapable of any that was perfect and good and therefore thought all the Service they could do to the State they lived under was to mend the Lives and Manners of particular Men that composed it But where Factions were once entred and rooted in a State they thought it madness for Good Men to meddle with Publick Affairs which made them turn their Thoughts and Entertainments to any thing rather than this and Heraclitus having upon the Factions of the Citizens quitted the Government of His City and amusing Himself to play with the Boys in the Porch of the Temple askt those who wondred at Him Whether 't was not better to play with such Boys than govern such Men But above all they esteemed Publick Business the most contrary of all others to that Tranquility of Mind which they esteemed and taught to be the only true Felicity of Man For this reason Epicurus passed His Life wholly in His Garden there He Studied there He Exercised there He taught His Philosophy and indeed no other sort of Abode seems to contribute so much to both the Tranquility of Mind and Indolence of Body which He made His Chief Ends. The Sweetness of Air the Pleasantness of Smells the Verdure of Plants the Cleanness and Lightness of Food the Exercises of working or walking but above all the Exemption from Cares and Sollicitude seem equally to favour and improve both Contemplation and Health the Enjoyments of Sense and Imagination and thereby the Quiet and Ease both of the Body and Mind Though Epicurus be said to have been the first that had a Garden in Athens whose Citizens before Him had theirs in their Villaes or Farms without the City yet the use of Gardens seems to have been the most ancient and most general of any sorts of Possession among Mankind and to have preceded those of Corn or of Cattle as yielding the easier the pleasanter and more natural Food As it has been the Inclination of Kings and the choice of Philosophers so has it been the common Favourite of publick and private Men a Pleasure of the greatest and a Care of the meanest and indeed an Employment and a Possession for which no Man is too high nor too low If we believe the Scripture we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the Life of a Man in a Garden the happiest He could give Him or else He would not have placed Adam in that of Eden that it was the state of Innocence and Pleasure and that the Life of Husbandry and Cities came in after the Fall with Guilt and with Labour Where Paradise was has been much debated and little agreed but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured It seems to have been a Persian Word since Zenophon and other Greek Authors mention it as what was much in use and delight among the Kings of those Eastern Countries Strabo describing Jericho says Ibi est palmetum cui immixtae sunt etiam aliae stirpes hortenses locus ferax palmis abundans spatio stadiorum centum totus irriguus ibi est Regia Balsami Paradisus He mentions another place to be prope Libanum Paradisum And Alexander is written to have seen Cyrus's Tomb in a Paradise being a Tower not very great and covered with a shade of Trees about it So that a Paradise among them seems to have been a large space of Ground adorned and beautified with all sorts of Trees both of Fruits and of Forest either found there before it was inclosed or planted after either cultivated like Gardens for Shades and for Walks with Fountains or Streams and all sorts of Plants usual in the Climat and pleasant to the Eye the Smell or the Taste or else employed like our Parks for Inclosure and Harbor of all sorts of Wild Beasts as well as for the pleasure of riding and walking And so they were of more or less extent and of differing entertainment according to the several Humours of the Princes that ordered and inclosed them Semiramis is the first we are told of in Story that brought them in use through Her Empire and was so fond of them as to make one where ever she built and in all or most of the Provinces she subdued which are said to have been from Babylon as far as India The Assyrian Kings continued this Custom and Care or rather this Pleasure till one of them brought in the use of smaller and more regular Gardens For having married a Wife he was fond of out of one of the Provinces where such Paradises or Gardens were much in use and the Country Lady not well bearing the Air or Inclosure of the Palace in Babylon to which the Assyrian Kings used to confine themselves He made Her Gardens not only within the Palace but upon Terrases raised with Earth over the arched Roofs and even upon the top of the highest Tower planted them with all sorts of Fruit-Trees as well as other Plants and Flowers the most pleasant of that Country and thereby made at least the most airy Gardens as well as the most costly that have been heard of in the World This Lady may probably have been Native of the Provinces of Chasimer or of Damascus which have in all
barbarous Forces For under the present Tartar Kings the Government continues still the same and in the Hands of the Chinese learned and all the change that appears to have been made by such a Storm or Revolution has been only that a Tartar Race sits in the Throne instead of a Chinese and the Cities and strong places are garrison'd by Tartar Souldiers who fall by degrees into the Manners Customs and Language of the Chineses So great a Respect or rather Veneration is paid to this wise and admirable Constitution even by its Enemies and Invaders that both Civil Usurpers and Foreign Conquerors vie with Emulation who shall make greatest Court and give most support to it finding no other means to secure their own Safety and Ease by the Obedience of the People than the Establishment and Preservation of their ancient Constitutions and Government The great Idea which may be conceived of the Chinese Wisdom and Knowledge as well as their Wit Ingenuity and Civility by all we either read or see of them is apt to be lessened by their gross and sottish Idolatry but this it self is only among the vulgar or illiterate who worship after their manner whatever Idols belong to each City or Village or Family and the Temples and Priests belonging to them are in usual request among the common People and the Women But the Learned adore the Spirit of the World which they hold to be Eternal and this without Temples Idols or Priests And the Emperor only is allowed to sacrifice at certain times by Himself or His Officers at two Temples in the two Imperial Cities of Peking and Nanking one dedicated to Heaven and t'other to the Earth This I mention to shew how the furthest East and West may be found to agree in Notions of Divinity as well as in Excellence of Civil or Politick Constitutions by passing at one leap from these of China to those of Peru. SECT III. 'T IS known enough that about the year 1484 Alonso Sanchez Master of a Spanish Vessel that usually traded from those Coasts to the Canaries and Madara's was in His Passage between these Islands surprised with a furious Storm at East so violent that He was forced to let His Ship drive before it without any Sail and so black that within twenty eight days He could not take the height of the Sun That He was at length cast upon a Shore but whether Island or Continent He could not tell but full of savage People That after infinite Toyls Dangers and miseries of Hunger and Sickness He made at length one of the Tercera Islands with only five Men left of seventeen He carried out and meeting there with the famous Columbo made Him such Relations and so pertinent Accounts of His Voyage as gave occasion for the discovery of America or the West-Indies by this Man so renowned in our Modern Story Whatever Predictions have been since found out or applyed towards the Discovery of this New World or Stories told of a certain Prince in Wales having run the same Fortune or of the ancient Carthaginians I do not find by all I have read upon this Subject any reason to believe that any Mortals from Europe or Africa had ever traced these unknown Paths of that Western Ocean or left the least Footsteps of having discovered those Countries before Alonso Sanchez and his Crew Upon the arrival of the Spaniards there with Columbus they found Nature as naked as the Inhabitants in most parts no thought of business further than the most natural Pleasures or Necessities of Life Nations divided by natural bounds of Rivers Rocks or Mountains or difference of Language Quarrels among them only for Hunger or Lust the Command in Wars given to the strongest or the bravest and in Peace taken up or exercised by the boldest among them and their Lives commonly spent in the most innocent entertainments of Hunting Fishing Feasting or in the most careless leisure There were among them many Principalities that seemed to have grown up from the original of Paternal Dominion and some Communities with Orders and Laws but the two great Dominions were those of Mexico and Peru which had arrived to such extent of Territory Power and Riches that amazed those who had been enough acquainted with the Greatness and Splendor of the European Kingdoms And I never met with any Story so entertaining as the Relations of the several learned Spanish Jesuits and others concerning these Countries and People in their native Innocence and Simplicity Mexico was so vast an Empire that it was well represented by the common answer of the Indians all along that Coast to the Spaniards when they came to any part and asked the People whether they were under Montezuma Quien noes esclavo de Montezuma or Who is not a Slave of Montezuma as if they thought the whole World was so They might truly call it Slave for no Dominion was ever so absolute so tyrannous and so cruel as His. Among other Tributes imposed on the People one was of Men to be sacrificed every year to an ugly deformed Idol in the great Temple of Mexico Such numbers as the King pleased of poor Victims were laid upon such extents of Cities or Villages or Numbers of Inhabitants and there chosen by lot to satisfy such bloody and inhuman Taxes These were often influenced by the Priests who when they saw Men grow negligent either in respect to themselves or devotion to their Idols would send to tell the King that the Gods were hungry and thereupon the common Tribute was raised so as that year the Spaniards landed and invaded Mexico there had been above thirty thousand Men sacrificed to this cruel Superstition And this was said to have given great occasion for the easie Conquests of the Spaniards by the willing Revolts and Submissions of the Natives to any new Dominion The same was observed to happen in Peru by the general hatred and aversion of the People in that Empire to Atahualpa who being a Bastard of the Yncas Family had first by Practices and Subtilty and afterwards by Cruelty and Violence raised Himself to the Throne of Peru and cut off with merciless Cruelty all the Masculine Race of the true Royal Blood that were at Man's estate or near it after that Line had lasted pure and sacred and reigned with unspeakable Felicity both to themselves and their Subjects for above eight hundred years This Kingdom is said to have extended near seven hundred Leagues in length from North to South and about an hundred and twenty in breadth 'T is bounded on the West by the Pacifick Ocean on the East by Mountains impassible for Men or Beasts and as some write even Birds themselves the height being such as makes their Tops always covered with Snow even in that warm Region On the North 't is bounded with a great River and on the South with another which separates it from the Province of Chili that reaches to the Magellan Straits The Kingdom of