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ruined, was supported in her emperors by a far slighter foundation. And in the common experience of good architecture, there is nothing more known than that buildings stand the firmer and the longer for their own weight, nor ever swerve through any other internal cause than that their materials are corruptible; but the people never die, nor, as a political body, are subject to any other corruption than that which derives from their government. Unless a man will deny the chain of causes, in which he denies God, he must also acknowledge the chain of effects; wherefore there can be no effect in Nature that is not from the first cause, and those successive links of the chain without which it could not have been. Now except a man can show the contrary in a commonwealth, if there be no cause of corruption in the first make of it, there can never be any such effect. Let no man's superstition impose profaneness upon this assertion; for as man is sinful, but yet the universe is perfect, so may the citizen be sinful, and yet the commonwealth be perfect. And as man, seeing the world is perfect, can never commit any such sin as shall render it imperfect, or bring it to a natural dissolution, so the citizen, where the commonwealth is perfect, can never commit any such crime as will render it imperfect, or bring it to a natural dissolution. Το come to experience: Venice, notwithstanding we have found some flaws in it, is the only commonwealth in the make whereof no man can find a cause of dissolution; for which reason we behold her (though she consists of men that are not without sin) at this day with one thousand years upon her back, yet for any internal cause, as young, as fresh, and free from decay, or any appearance of it, as she was born; but whatever in Nature is not sensible of decay by the course of a thousand years, is capable of the whole age of Nature; by which calculation, for any check that I am able to give myself, a commonwealth, rightly ordered, may for any internal causes be as immortal or long-lived as the world. But if this be true, those commonwealths that are naturally fallen, must have derived their ruin from the rise of them. Israel and Athens died not natural but violent deaths, in which manner the world itself is to die. We are speaking of those causes of dissolution which are natural to government; and they are but two, either contradiction or inequality. If a commonwealth be a contradiction, she must needs destroy herself; and if she be unequal, it tends to strife, and strife to ruin. By the former of these fell Lacedemon, by the latter Rome.

Lacedemon being made altogether for war,

and yet not for increase, her natural progress became her natural dissolution, and the building of her own victorious hand too heavy for her foundation, so that she fell indeed by her own weight. But Rome perished through her native inequality, which how it inveterated the bosoms of the senate and the people each against other, and even to death, has been shown at large.

(From the Same.)

SAMUEL BUTLER

[Samuel Butler was born in 1612 and died in 1680. The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler, Author of Hudibras, were published in 1759 by R. Thyer, Keeper of the Public Library at Manchester. Less than half of the two volumes is in verse; the remainder, in prose, consists of a few tracts, principally of political satire and controversy, a series of Characters belonging to the same class of writing as Sir Thomas Overbury's and Earle's Microcosmography, and a few selections from Butler's commonplace-books. The editor had manuscript authority for most, not all,

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of the contents of his book, and the British Museum possesses some of the manuscript sources in Butler's own hand, and some of Mr. Thyer's transcripts. Of these MSS. a considerable portion remains unedited sixty-six characters transcribed but not sent to the press,-one of them being the character of a publisher, and a great quantity of miscellaneous notes, for which Butler himself has provided headings, Learning and Knowledge," Religion," Reason,' 'Opinion, Nature, "History" (with a notice of the Kingdom of Yvetot), "Princes and Governments," Contradictions." The last, with "Inconsistent Opinions," is a favourite theme. Of the series of Characters there are four in the author's hand, written out fair, numbered and paged, with English headings in Greek letters; Bankrupt," numbered 202, paged 237, dated 6th October '67; "War," 206, 13th October '67; Horsecourser," 204, 8th October '67 ; "Churchwarden," 203, 8th October '67. At least twenty of these essays seem to have been lost. The character of "an Hector" is here printed from the MS. (Add. 32,626); the other three are from the Remains.]

"

HUDIBRAS contains the essence of Butler's studies; the ingredients of his satire are to be found in his prose collections; 1 his prose essays refer, sometimes explicitly, to the work by which he had made his name. But though Hudibras is Butler's master

1 "I am informed by Mr. Thyer of Manchester, the excellent editor of this author's reliques, that he could show something like Hudibras in prose. He has in his possession the commonplace-book, in which Butler reposited, not such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or influences, as occasion prompted, or meditation produced; those thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the labour of those who write for immortality."-JOHNSON: Life of Butler.

piece, it does not reveal the whole of his mind. In Hudibras things are finished and pointed; but much of the author's life was spent in what he is fond of calling "owl-light," and in a mood too sore to be contented with epigram. The resemblance between Butler and Swift, which is not marked in Hudibras, comes out strongly in Butler's prose. It is not only that both Butler and Swift are disposed to take the claims of modern science rather lightly, or to parody Boyle's Meditations. The resemblance is deeper than that; it lies in their common devotion to an ideal of a reasonable life, free from exaggeration; in their want of mercy for confusion of thought, and disproportion in studies, for the pretentions of philosophers and theologians, for the enthusiasms of the dunce, and the infallibility of the churl. Butler is not hopeful: he loses his good spirits when he takes off the mask of Harlequin. "In religion and the civil life the wisest and ablest are fain to comply and submit to the weakest and most ignorant for their own quiet and convenience." And "all the business of the world is but diversion, and all the happiness in it than mankind is capable of, anything that will keep it from reflecting upon the misery, vanity, and nonsense of it; and whoever can by any trick keep himself from thinking of it, is as wise and happy as the best man in it.”

In so far as this temper is to be found in the prose fragments, they are the complement of Hudibras, and a better document for the interpretation of Butler's mind. Hudibras is too glaring, and cannot express the simpler ideas of Butler. His ruling and characteristic ideas are generally quite simple and unaffected, and the chief of them is an admiration of simplicity and of good sense. Together with that, there is the conviction of the rarity of good sense, and the impression that the ways of the world are generally extravagant. "This age will serve to make a very pretty farce for the next, if it have any wit to make use of it.” The satire and the fancy of Butler are to be found in Hudibras, but his irony and the sublimer form of contempt are in his prose.

The Characters are very various, some of them commonplace, and not in any striking way distinguishable from the common form in this kind of writing. Some of them, however, are drawn from the life, and touched off with all the skill of the master of surprises and strange analogies. One is an undisguised portrait of "A Duke of Bucks": this is the prose counterpart of the char acter of Zimri. "He endures pleasures with less patience than

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