Winchester to Oxford in 1740; published, in 1742, his "Persian Eclogues," afterwards republished under the title of "Oriental Eclogues;" and, having taken his degree of B.A., came to London with genius and ambition, but an irresolute mind, not wholly sound. He suffered much from poverty. In 1747 he published his "Odes," polished with nice care, and classical in the best sense, rising above the affectations of the time, and expressing subtleties of thought and feeling with simple precision. "The Ode to Evening" is unrhymed, in a measure like that of Horace's "Ode to Pyrrha." The Ode on "The Passions," for music, rose in energy of thought and skill of expression to the level even of Dryden's "Alexander's Feast." But the volume was not well received. When Thomson died, in 1748, William Collins wrote an ode suggested by the event. In 1749 Collins was released from want by the death of his mother's brother, Colonel Martyn, who had often helped him, and now left him about two thousand pounds. But, in another year, his reason began to fail. He had been in a lunaticasylum at Chelsea before he was removed to Chichester in 1754. There his sister took charge of him, and he died, at the age of thirty-eight, in June, 1759. When the great cloud was coming over him, he carried but one book about with him -a child's school Bible. "I have but one book," he said, "but that is the best;" and when he suffered most, in his latter days at Chichester, a neighboring vicar said, "Walking in my vicaral garden one Sunday evening, during Collins's last illness, I heard a female (the servant, I suppose) reading the Bible in his chamber. Mr. Collins had been accustomed to rave much, and make great moanings; but while she was reading, or rather attempting to read, he was not only silent, but attentive likewise, correcting her mistakes, which, indeed, were very frequent, through the whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis."

28. Richard Savage, born in 1698, was a natural son of the Countess of Macclesfield. When he accidentally discovered who was his mother she repelled him. He wrote plays, and was befriended by Steele, lived an ill-regulated life, killed a man in a tavern brawl, was found guilty, and had his mother

active in opposing the endeavors made to obtain mercy for him. He was pardoned, and stayed from writing against his mother by a pension of two hundred pounds a year from Lord Tyrconnel, who also received Savage into his family. He published, in 1729, a moral poem called "The Wanderer." Lord Tyrconnel found Savage's wild way of life unendurable, and Savage, asked not to spend all his nights in taverns, resolved to " spurn that friend who should presume to dictate to him." They parted. Savage attacked his mother in a poem called "The Bastard inscribed with all due reverence to Mrs. Brett, once

Countess of Macclesfield;' in another poem, "The Progress

of a Divine," he described a profligate priest who rose by wickedness, and who found at last a patron in the Bishop of London. He received fifty pounds a year from the queen, and, when he received the money annually, disappeared till it was spent. After the queen's death his friends promised to find him fifty pounds a year, if he would live quietly in Wales. He went to Wales, but was coming back to London when he was arrested for debt, died in prison, July 31, 1743, and was buried at the expense of his jailer. Johnson, who knew and pitied him,―as poor as he, and knowing what the struggle was in which Savage had fallen, while he rose himself in dignity, said, "Those are no proper judges of his conduct who have slumbered away their time on the down of plenty." He told Savage's sad tale with the kindliness of a true nature, while he drew from it the lesson," that nothing will supply the want of prudence; and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

CHAPTER XIII.

FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION.

1. Thomas Burnet. -2. William Whiston.-3. Richard Bentley.-4. George Berke ley.-5. David Hartley.-6. Bernard de Mandeville. -7. Henry St. John.8. Isaac Watts.-9. Joseph Butler.-10. John Wesley; Charles Wesley. — 11. William Warburton. - 12. Francis Atterbury; Samuel Clarke; Benjamin Hoadly.

1. Thomas Burnet was born about 1635, was educated at Cambridge, and became, in 1685, Master of the Charterhouse. Four years before, he had published his “Telluris Theoria Sacra," in which he discussed the natural history of our planet, in its origin, its changes, and its consummation, and the four books contain-(1) The Theory of the Deluge by Dissolution of the Outer Crust of the Earth, its Subsidence in the Great Abyss, and the Forming of the Earth as it now Exists; (2) Of the First Created Earth and Paradise; (3) Of the Conflagration of the World; and (4) Of the New Heavens and the New Earth, and the Consummation of all Things. This new attempt made by a doctor of divinity to blend large scientific generalization with study of Scripture, more imaginative than scientific, stirred many fancies, and was much read and discussed. But, under William III., Thomas Burnet's speculations in his Archæologiæ Philosophicæ Libri Duo" drew on him strong theological censure; and he was called an infidel by many because he read the Fall of Adam as an allegory. This not only destroyed his chance of high promotion in the church, but caused him to be removed from the office of Clerk of the Closet to the king, and he died at a good old age, in 1715, still Master of the Charterhouse.

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2. William Whiston, who was born in 1667, was chaplain to a bishop when, in 1696, he published "A New Theory of the Earth, from its Original to the Consummation of all Things." This fed the new appetite for cosmical theories with fresh speculation. In Burnet's system, fire, in Whiston's, water, played chief part as the great agent of change. In 1698 Whiston became Vicar of Lowestoft, and in 1700 he lectured at Cambridge, as deputy to Newton, whom he succeeded in the Lucasian professorship. In Queen Anne's reign his search for a primitive Christianity affected his theology, and brought on him loss of his means of life in the church and university. He taught science; lived,

as a poor man, a long and blameless life, until his death, in 1752; and in his writings blended love of nature with the love of God.

3. Richard Bentley, born in 1662, the son of a small farmer in Yorkshire, received his education at Cambridge, and became the greatest scholar in England. In his "Epistola ad Clarum Virum Joannem Millium," he first publicly displayed the powers of his mind and the extent of his learning; and his reputation was raised to the highest point by his "Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris," published in 1699. In 1700, he was made Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; in 1717, he was made Regius Professor of Divinity. His great learning was further exhibited in his editions of Homer, Phædrus, Terence, and "Paradise Lost." He died in 1742.

4. George Berkeley was born in the county of Kilkenny, in 1685. He was educated at the Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a fellow in 1707. In 1709 appeared Berkeley's "New Theory of Vision; " in 1710, his "Principles of Human Knowledge; " in 1713, his "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous;" and in 1732, his "Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher." He opposed the materialist tendencies of the time with a metaphysical theory that represented an extreme re-action from them. The existence of matter could no more, he said, be proved, than the existence of the spirit could be disproved. We know only that we receive certain impressions on the mind. Berkeley was made Bishop of Cloyne in 1735, and died in 1753.

5. David Hartley (b. 1705, d. 1757) was a physician, educated at Cambridge, who, in 1749, published “Observations on Man; his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations," arguing that vibrations of the nerves produce all intellectual energy, by causing the association of ideas.

6. Bernard de Mandeville represented the rising tendency to speculate on the corruptions of society. Great principles still underlying public contests were now buried under party feuds and personal ambitions. Men were growing up with little in the public life about them to inspire a noble faith, or stir them to the depths. Polite life in the time of George I. had become artificial; with small faith in human nature, negligent of truth. The fashionable world had the king's mistress

for a leader; and the prevailing influence of French fashion, which had been low at its best, was degraded since the death of Louis XIV., in 1715. The court of France was sinking into infamy. Polite society in France was the more tainted, and the nation suffered many tyrannies. Mandeville, born at Dort, in Holland, about 1670, graduated as a physician, and practised in England. After a coarse, outspoken book, in 1709, he published, in 1711, "A Treatise on the Hypochondriac and Hysteric Diseases," in three dialogues, with amusing strictures upon medical follies; and in 1714 appeared a short poem of five hundred lines, called "The Grumbling Hive; or, Knaves Turned Honest." There was a volume, in 1720, of "Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness," and "The Grumbling Hive" re-appeared, in 1723, with a full prose commentary, as "The Fable of the Bees." This book outraged conventional opinion, by working out an argument that civilization is based on the vices of society. The bees lived in their hives as men, "Millions endeavoring to supply Each other's lust and vanity; " lawyers, physicians, priests, thriving upon the feuds, follies, and vices of mankind. Luxury employed its million, pride its million, envy stirred men to work. Fickleness of idle fashion was the wheel that kept trade moving. But the hive grumbled at the vice within it, and the knaves turned honest. In half an hour meat fell a penny a pound; masks fell from all faces. The bar was silent, because there were no more frauds; judges, jailers, and Jack Ketch retired, with all their pomp. The number of the doctors was reduced to those who knew that they had earned their skill. Clergy who knew themselves to be unfit for their duty resigned their All lived within their incomes, and paid ready money. Glory by war and foreign conquest was laughed at by these honest bees, who "fight but for their country's sake, When right or liberty's at stake." Then followed fall of prices, extinction of trades founded upon luxury, and of the commerce that supplied it. These glories of civilization are gone, still Peace and Plenty reign, and every thing is cheap, though plain. At last the dwellers in the honest hive appeared so much reduced as to become a mark for foreign insult, and they

cures.