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not imagine that the sensations of sympathetic sorrow, either always or immediately, give rise to this reflection. Children, and even savages, are susceptible of pity, who think no more of claiming any merit to themselves on this score than they think of claiming merit from their feeling the natural appetites of hunger and thirst. Nay, it is very possible that persons may know its power and sweetness too, when, through the influence of education and bad example, they consider it as a weakness or blemish in their disposition, and, as such, endeavour to conceal and stifle it. A certain degree of civilization seems to be necessary to make us thoroughly sensible of its beauty and utility, and, consequently, that it ought to be cultivated. Bigotry may teach a man to think inhumanity, in certain circumstances, a virtue; yet nature will reclaim, and may make him, in spite of the dictates of a misguided conscience, feel all the tenderness of pity to the heretic, who, in his opinion, has more than merited the very worst that can be inflicted on him.

I acknowledge that, on the other hand, when the sentiment comes generally to prevail that compassion is in itself praiseworthy, it may be rendered a source of much more self-satisfaction to the vainglorious than reasonably it ought to yield. Such persons gladly lay hold of every handle which serves to raise them in their own esteem; and I make no doubt that several, from this very motive, have exalted this principle as immoderately as others have vilified it. Every good man will agree that this is the case when people consider it as either a veil for their vices, or an atonement for the neglect of their duty. For my own part, I am inclined to think that those who are most ready to abuse it thus are not the most remarkable for any exercise of it by which society can be profited. There is a species of deception in the case which it is not beside the purpose briefly to unravel.

It hath been observed that sense invariably makes a stronger impression than memory, and memory a stronger than imagination; yet there are particular circumstances which appear to form an exception, and to give an efficacy to the ideas of imagination beyond what either memory or sense can boast. So great is the anomaly which sometimes displays itself in human characters, that it is not impossible to find persons who are quickly made to cry at seeing a tragedy or reading a romance which they know to be fictions, and yet are both inattentive and unfeeling in respect to the actua' objects of compassion who live in their neighbourhood and are daily under their eye. Nevertheless, this is an exception from the rule more in appearance than in reality. The cases are not parallel: there are certain circumstances which obtain in the one and have no place in the other, and to these

peculiarities the difference in the effect is solely imputable. What follows will serve fully to explain my meaning.

Men may be of a selfish, contracted, and even avaricious disposition, who are not what we should denominate hardhearted, or insusceptible of sympathetic feeling. Such will gladly enjoy the luxury of pity (as Hawkesworth terms it) when it nowise interferes with their more powerful passions; that is, when it comes unaccompanied with a demand upon their pockets. With the tragic or the romantic hero or heroine they most cordially sympathize, because the only tribute which wretches of their dignity exact from them is sighs and tears; and of these their consciences inform them, to their inexpressible consolation, that they are no niggards. But the case is totally different with living objects. Barren tears and sighs will not satisfy these. Hence it is that people's avarice, a most formidable adversary to the unhappy, is interested to prevent their being moved by such, and to make them avoid, as much as possible, every opportunity of knowing or seeing them.* But as that cannot always be done: as commiseration is attended with benevolence, and as benevolence itself, if not gratified by our giving relief when it is in our power, imbitters the pleasure which would otherwise result from pity; as the refusal is also attended with self-reproach, a person of such a temper, strongly, and for the most part effectually, resists his being moved. He puts his ingenuity to the rack in order to satisfy himself that he ought not to be affected. He is certain that the person is not a proper object of benevolence; he is convinced that his distress is more pretended than real; or, if that cannot be alleged, the man hath surely brought it on himself by his vices, therefore he deserves to suffer, and is nowise entitled to our pity; or at least he makes not a good use of what may charitably, but injudiciously, be bestowed upon him. Such are the common shifts by which selfishness eludes the calls of

In the parable of the compassionate Samaritan, Luke, x., 30, &c., this disposition to shun the sight of misery, which one is resolved not to redress, is finely touched in the conduct of the priest and the Levite, who, when they espied a person naked, wounded, and almost expiring on the road, are said to have passed by on the other side. Indeed, in the account given of the Levite in our version, there is something which to me has a contradictory appearance. He came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. There is not a vestige of this inconsistency in the original, which says simply, ελθων και ιδων αντιπαρήλθεν, the meaning of which plainly is, "travelling that way, and seeing one in this wretched plight, he kept on the other side of the road, and passed on." In such a case, a man who is not quite obdurate would avoid the cutting reflection that he knows anything of the matter; and though he must be conscious that he knew a lit tle, and might have known more if he would, he is glad to gloss his inhu manity even to himself with some pretext of hurry or thoughtlessness, oi anything that may conceal the raked truth, a truth which he is as ave to discover in himself as he is to see in another the misery which he is termined not to relieve.

humanity, and chooses to reserve all its worthless stock of pity for fictitious objects, or for those who, in respect of time, or place, or eminence, are beyond its reach.

For these reasons, I am satisfied that compassion alone, especially that displayed on occasion of witnessing public spectacles, is at best but a very weak evidence of philan thropy. The only proof that is entirely unequivocal is actual beneficence, when one seeks out the real objects of commiseration, not as a matter of self-indulgence, but in order to bring relief to those who need it, to give hope to the desponding, and comfort to the sorrowful; for the sake of which one endures the sight of wretchedness, when, instead of giving pleasure, it distresseth every feeling heart. Such, however, enjoy at length a luxury far superior to that of pity, the godlike luxury of dispelling grief, communicating happiness, and doing good

02

BOOK II.

THE FOUNDATIONS AND ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF ELOCU TION.

CHAPTER I.

THE NATURE AND CHARACTERS OF THE USE WHICH GIVES LAW TO LANGUAGE.

ELOQUENCE hath always been considered, and very justly, as having a particular connexion with language. It is the intention of eloquence to convey our sentiments into the minds of others, in order to produce a certain effect upon them. Language is the only vehicle by which this conveyance can be made. The art of speaking, then, is not less necessary to the orator than the art of thinking. Without the latter, the former could not have existed; without the former, the latter would be ineffective. Every tongue whatever is founded in use or custom,

"Whose arbitrary sway Words and the forms of language must obey."*

FRANCIS.

Language is purely a species of fashion (for this holds equally of every tongue), in which, by the general but tacit consent of the people of a particular state or country, certain sounds come to be appropriated to certain things as their signs, and certain ways of inflecting and combining those sounds come to be established as denoting the relations which subsist among the things signified.

It is not the business of grammar, as some critics seem preposterously to imagine, to give law to the fashions which regulate our speech. On the contrary, from its conformity to these, and from that alone, it derives all its authority and value. For what is the grammar of any language? It is no other than a collection of general observations methodically digested, and comprising all the modes previously and independently established, by which the significations, derivations, and combinations of words in that language are ascertained. It is of no consequence here to what causes originally these modes or fashions owe their existence to imitation, to reflection, to affectation, or to caprice; they no

"Usus

Quem pene: arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi."
HOR., De Arte Poet.

sooner obtain and become general than they are laws of the language, and the grammarian's only business is to note, collect, and methodize them. Nor does this truth concern only those more comprehensive analogies or rules which affect whole classes of words, such as nouns, verbs, and the other parts of speech; but it concerns every individual word, in the inflecting or the combining of which a particular mode hath prevailed. Every single anomaly, therefore, though departing from the rule assigned to the other words of the same class, and on that account called an exception, stands on the same basis on which the rules of the tongue are founded, custom having prescribed for it a separate rule.*

The truth of this position hath never, for aught I can remember, been directly controverted by anybody; yet it is certain that both critics and grammarians often argue in such a way as is altogether inconsistent with it. What, for example, shall we make of that complaint of Dr. Swift, "that our language, in many instances, offends against every part of grammar?" Or what could the doctor's notion of grammar be, when he expressed himself in this manner? Some notion, possibly, he had of grammar in the abstract, a universal archetype by which the particular grammars of all different tongues ought to be regulated. If this was his meaning, I cannot say whether he is in the right or in the wrong in this accusation. I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant of this ideal grammar; nor can I form a conjecture where its laws are to be learned. One thing, indeed, every smatterer in philosophy will tell us, that there can be no natural connexion between the sounds of any language and the things signified, or between the modes of inflection and combination, and the relations they are intended to express. Perhaps he meant the grammar of some other language; if so, the charge was certainly true, but not to the purpose, since we can say with equal truth of every language, that it offends against the grammar of every other language whatsoever. If he meant the English grammar, I would ask, Whence has that grammar derived its laws? If from general use (and I cannot conceive another origin), then it must be owned that there is a general use in that language as well as in others; and it were absurd to accuse the language which is purely what is conformable to general use in speaking and writing, as offending against general use. But if he meant to say that there is no fixed, established, or general use in the language, that

*Thus, in the two verbs call and shall, the second person singular of the former is callest, agreeably to the general rule; the second person singular of the latter is shalt, agreeably to a particular rule affecting that verb. To say shallest for shalt would be as much a barbarism, though according to the general rule, as to say calt for callest, which is according to no rule.

Letter to the Lord High Treasurer, &c.

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