ARLINGTON STREET, _Dec._ 9, 1758.
Sir,--I have desired Mr. Whiston to convey to you the second edition of
my Catalogue, not so complete as it might have been, if great part had
not been printed before I received your remarks, but yet more correct
than the first sketch with which I troubled you. Indeed, a thing of this
slight and idle nature does not deserve to have much more pains employed
upon it.
I am just undertaking an edition of Lucan, my friend Mr. Bentley having
in his possession his father's notes and emendations on the first seven
books. Perhaps a partiality for the original author concurs a little
with this circumstance of the notes, to make me fond of printing, at
Strawberry Hill, the works of a man who, alone of all the classics, was
thought to breathe too brave and honest a spirit for the perusal of the
Dauphin and the French. I don't think that a good or bad taste in poetry
is of so serious a nature, that I should be afraid of owning too, that,
with that great judge Corneille, and with that, perhaps, _no_ judge
Heinsius, I prefer Lucan to Virgil. To speak fairly, I prefer great
sense, to poetry with little sense. There are hemistichs in Lucan that
go to one's soul and one's heart;--for a mere epic poem, a fabulous
tissue of uninteresting battles that don't teach one even to fight, I
know nothing more tedious. The poetic images, the versification and
language of the Aeneid are delightful; but take the story by itself, and
can anything be more silly and unaffecting? There are a few gods without
power, heroes without character, heaven-directed wars without justice,
inventions without probability, and a hero who betrays one woman with a
kingdom that he might have had, to force himself upon another woman and
another kingdom to which he had no pretensions, and all this to show his
obedience to the gods! In short, I have always admired his numbers so
much, and his meaning so little, that I think I should like Virgil
better if I understood him less.
Have you seen, Sir, a book which has made some noise--"Helvetius de
l'Esprit"[1]? The author is so good and moral a man, that I grieve he
should have published a system of as relaxed morality as can well be
imagined: 'tis a large quarto, and in general a very superficial one.
His philosophy may be new in France, but it greatly exhausted here. He
tries to imitate Montesquieu,[2] and has heaped common-places upon
common-places, which supply or overwhelm his reasoning; yet he has
often wit, happy allusions, and sometimes writes finely: there is merit
enough to give an obscure man fame; flimsiness enough to depreciate a
great man. After his book was licensed, they forced him to retract it by
a most abject recantation. Then why print this work? If zeal for his
system pushed him to propagate it, did not he consider that a
recantation would hurt his cause more than his arguments could support
it?
[Footnote 1: Helvetius was the son of the French king's physician. His
book was condemned by the Parliament of Paris as derogatory to the
nature of man.]
[Footnote 2: Montesquieu was President of the Parliament of Bordeaux. He
was a voluminous writer, his most celebrated work being his "L'Esprit
des Lois." Burke described him as "A genius not born in every country,
or every time: with a Herculean robustness of mind; and nerves not to be
broken by labour."]
We are promised Lord Clarendon in February from Oxford, but I hear shall
have the surreptitious edition from Holland much sooner.
You see, Sir, I am a sceptic as well as Helvetius, but of a more
moderate complexion. There is no harm in telling mankind that there is
not so much divinity in the Aeneid as they imagine; but, even if I
thought so, I would not preach that virtue and friendship are mere
names, and resolvable into self-interest; because there are numbers that
would remember the grounds of the principle, and forget what was to be
engrafted on it. Adieu!
_STATE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS._