miseries were to listen, amid their tears, to frigid and fruitless discussions on the folly of complaint and the necessity of submission, instead of being exhorted to look forward to brighter and better scenes, and to seek shelter and refuge in the tranquil sanctuary of religious hope.

One of the most afflicted characters of the antient drama, has exhausted, in the detail of her sorrows, the fancy, the eloquence, and the pity of the poet. How is she consoled?" Tears cannot restore the dead, recollection cannot bring back the past. Lamentation is, therefore, vain; and nothing remains but to forget the blessings which have been lost, and to submit with prudence to the calamity which has occurred*.

The religion, then, of the Greek and Roman affords little to strengthen the heart of afflicted man; and the dogmatists of the schools will not be found more successful in their lessons.

I. Even the philosopher who was most devoted to ease and pleasure, has been able to provide no remedy for the wounds of sorrow. In his more feeble moods, contemplating the sovereign good only in enjoyment, and the sovereign evil only in pain, he affirms that the first is to be preferred to glory and virtue, and that the last is more intolerable than infamy and crimet." In his less effeminate moments, exclaiming that he only lives who knows how to

In the Trojan Captives of Euripides, these miserable consolations are addressed by Hecuba to her daughter Andromache. The poet had no better consolations to dictate to maternal tenderness.

The same vicious doctrine, the natural inference from the tenet that pain was the last of evils, Tuscul. Quæst. lib. ii. § 6, was taught by many of the antient philosophers. In eo magistra vitæ philosophia tot sæcula manet.

Ibid.

I

think*, he indulges a paradoxical austerity, of which the maxims are as impracticable, as the fundamental doctrines of his school are worthless and voluptuous. According to him, the wise man, containing in himself all possible perfections †, can triumph over the tortures of the rack, and repose with felicity amid the flames of the bull of Phalarist. But, while the philosopher thus dogmatises, in the confidence of triumph, he abandons, for a silly yet hardy theory, the common sense and common convictions of mankind; and the sorrows of life, while they weep, demand from him in vain, not the impossible invulnerability with which he invests his sage, but a single motive or hope to soothe, to guide, or to cheer them.

II. The Stoic rivals the hardihood of his Epicurean brother. Pain and grief, he admits, are evils, "odious, terrible, and contrary to nature." But he also has his wise man, who, however tried by calamity, walks forth in the conscious superiority of fortitude and of wisdom, and denies the evil of that affliction which he yet acknowledges to be "terrible and odious." In the mean time, all the rest of the

* Ipsi sapienti vivere cogitare est. Tuscul. Quest. lib. ii. § 6. + Qui sapiens est,

Et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et idem est rex. The poet slily laughs at the doctrine, but it was sincerely maintained by the philosopher.

In Phalaris tauro si erit, dicet, " quam suave est! quam hoc non curo!" Tusc. Quæst. lib. ii. § 7. Cicero opposes to this boastful philosophy, the lamentations of the hero Philoctetes, and of the demigod Hercules.

O pain, said Possidonius, while suffering under the agonies of an acute disease, thou shalt not triumph. Afflict me as thou mayest, I will not acknowledge thee to be an evil. Cicer. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. 24. De Fin. l. v. 21.

world are to wail and weep, unconsoled, under the burden of life; and, while that is taught which it is impossible to practise, or that is boasted which it is impossible to attain, a paradoxical and fruitless lesson is the sole balsam medicated, by the physician of the portico, for the wounds of the heart*.

In a manner equally inadequate, but more eloquent and imposing, the Roman Academician struggles to fortify the mind of his pupil against the calamities of life, and the terrors of death. He disdains to shape out a being of imaginary insensibility, and of supercilious and impossible independence; but he argues rather as a metaphysician than as a man, rather as a sophist, to silence and confute, than as a philosopher, to instruct, to comfort, and to console. The treatise in which, with such exquisite felicity of language, and sometimes, with such sublimity of moral precept, he endeavours to fortify the soul against the approach of calamity and death, affords not, perhaps, a single passage, which might direct the hope of the sufferer to a beneficent Providence, or to the future destiny of the upright. If he talk with an energy which every good man will feel, and every bad man respect, of the supreme evil of vice

The inconsistencies of which the proud talkers of the schools of Zeno and Epicurus were perpetually guilty, are monstrous and absurd. Pain, in the opinion of the first, was not an evil, yet it was "odious, lamentable, and contrary to nature." Pain, in the opinion of the second, was the greatest of evils, yet the wise man might say, with triumphant superiority, My sufferings are delightful! Tuscul. Disput. lib. ii. § 7. The Stoic and the Epicurean were equally sophists, and philosophy owes them little.

I advert to the Tusculan Disputations, a work which affords a striking evidence of the logic of their author. Would there were, more conviction, and less confutation.

and infamy, he yet arms integrity for the combat with no sustaining motive, and no animating anticipation. To the dejections of sorrow are opposed the cold abstractions of a sceptical school; and the sophistries of philosophy are confuted by the feelings of the heart.

In the ample field in which he expatiates, the Academician scatters around him, with inexhaustible prodigality, the flowers of eloquence; but, to demonstrate the folly of the terrors against which he declaims, he falsifies the condition of human life. The world, according to him, is a gloomy theatre of calamity and sorrow; and every where are to be found the altar and the victim. On this side of the grave, therefore, the afflicted have no refuge. Death, accordingly, whether it be a change of dwelling, or the tranquillity of an eternal sleep*, cannot but be considered as the best recompense which the gods have to confer on the piety of their votaries; and if, under a system so pregnant with evil as the present life, the first of blessings would be never to exist, the second, it may with equal justice be maintained, would be speedily to diet.

But, he continues, the evils to be endured, before death may open its asylum to the sufferer, are said to be extreme, and, perhaps, intolerable. Yet habit and custom have produced resolution utterly

Cicero speaks of the final destiny of man with the hesitation of his school-ut aut in eternum, aut omni sensu et molestia caremus-and he seems to contemplate, with equal satisfaction, the eternity and the extinction. Tusculan. lib. i. § 19.

Non nasci homines longe optimum esse; proximum quam primum mori. Cicero attributes the apothegm to a certain Silenus; and he endeavours to confirm it by the authority of Euripides and Crantor. Tusculan. Disput. lib. i. §

superior to the assaults of pain. Behold the Spartan boy at the foot of the altar, the combatant in the arena, the thousands, recorded by history, who have braved the most afflicting trials from motives of fear, or hope, or shame, or glory. Is that which has been so often and so triumphantly sustained, beyond the fortitude or endurance of human nature? And shall we ignominiously weep and wail under trials, which so many have endured with undisturbed composure, or so many subdued with unintimidated magnanimity?

If, however, it is added, these motives be insufficent to sustain us under the assaults of fortune, let us recollect that, whatever be our lot, we have a harbour before us inaccessible to pain and sorrow. The mariner, pursued by pirates, would no longer fear, if some god were to say to him, "Plunge into the sea, your protector is at hand, the dolphin of Orion, or the steeds of Neptune, shall be ready to carry you whithersoever you To all men will." a similar language may be addressed. Are your calamities intolerable? Have you no further strength, no remaining resource? Behold! the port is open before you. Behold the asylum which is tendered by the grave*.

Thus ends, at last, the long lesson of fortitude and patience, pronounced by that eloquence on which has been lavished the admiration of antient and modern times. Among the feeble exhortations of the orator we discover the dogmatical subtilty of the sophist. Glory, shame, habit, example, a due re.

Appendix, Note R.