played and fostered virtues worthy of a better age; when our Malachies wore collars of gold which they had won in single combat from the invader,1 and our Briens deserved the blessings of a people by all the most estimable qualities of a king. It may be said, indeed, that the magic of tradition has shed a charm over this remote period, to which it is in reality but little entitled, and that most of the pictures, which we dwell on so fondly, of days when this island was distinguished amidst the gloom of Europe. by the sanctity of her morals, the spirit of her knighthood, and the polish of her schools, are little more than the inventions of national partiality,—that bright but spurious offspring which vanity engenders upon ignorance, and with which the first records of every people abound. But the sceptic is scarcely to be envied who would pause for stronger proofs than we already possess of the early glories of Ireland; and were even the veracity of all these proofs surrendered, yet who would not fly to such flattering fictions from the sad degrading truths which the history of later times presents to us?

The language of sorrow, however, is, in general, best suited to our Music, and with themes of this nature the poet may be amply supplied. There is not a page of our annals which cannot afford him a subject, and while the national Muse of other countries adorns her temple with trophies of the past, in Ireland her altar, like the shrine of Pity at Athens, is to be known only by the tears that are shed upon it; lacrymis altaria sudant."

There is a well-known story, related of the Antiochians under the reign of Theodosius, which is not only honourable to the powers of music in general, but which applies so peculiarly to the mournful melodies of Ireland, that I cannot resist the temptation of introducing it here. The piety of Theodosius would have been admirable, if it had not been stained with intolerance; but his reign, I believe, affords the first example of a disqualifying penal code enacted by Christians against Christians. Whether his interference with the religion of the Antiochians had any share in the alienation of their loyalty is not expressly ascertained by historians; but severe edicts, heavy taxation, and the rapacity and insolence of the men whom he sent to govern them, sufficiently account for the discontents of a warm and susceptible people. Repentance soon followed the crimes into which their impatience had hurried them; but the vengeance of the Emperor was implacable, and punishments of the most dreadful nature hung over the city of Antioch, whose devoted inhabitants, totally resigned to despondence, wandered through the streets and public assemblies, giving utterance to their grief in dirges of the most touching lamentation. At length, Flavianus, their bishop, whom they had sent to intercede with Theodosius, finding all his entreaties coldly rejected, adopted the expedient of teaching these songs of sorrow which he had heard from the lips of his unfortunate countrymen to the minstrels who performed for the Emperor at table. The heart of Theodosius could not resist this appeal; tears fell fast into his cup while he listened, and the Antiochians were forgiven.-Surely, if music ever spoke the misfortunes of a people, or could ever conciliate forgiveness for their errors, the music of Ireland ought to possess those powers.

1 See 'Warner's History of Ireland,' vol. i. fanatic populace. The sectaries were gradually book ix.

2 Statius, Thebaid,' lib. xii. 3A sort of civil excommunication,' says Gibbon, which separated them from their fellowcitizens by a peculiar brand of infamy; and this declaration of the supreme magistrate tended to justify, or at least to excuse, the insults of a

disqualified for the possession of honourable or lucrative employments, and Theodosius was satisfied with his own justice when he decreed, that, as the Eunomians distinguished the nature of the Son from that of the Father, they should be incapable of making their wills, or of receiving any advantage from testamentary donations.'

THE SCEPTIC:

A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.

1808.

NOMON IIANTON BAZIAEA.-Pindar, ap. Herodot, lib. 3.

PREFACE.

6

THE Sceptical philosophy of the ancients has been as much misrepresented as the Epicurean. Pyrrho, perhaps, may have carried it to an irrational excess (though we must not believe, with Beattie, all the absurdities imputed to this philosopher); but it appears to me that the doctrines of the school, as stated by Sextus Empiricus, are much more suited to the frailty of human reason, and more conducive to the mild virtues of humility and patience, than any of those systems which preceded the introduction of Christianity. The Sceptics held a middle path between the Dogmatists and Academicians, the former of whom boasted that they had attained the truth, while the latter denied that any attainable truth existed. The Sceptics, however, without asserting or denying its existence, professed to be modestly and anxiously in search of it; as St. Augustine expresses it, in his liberal tract against the Manicheans, nemo nostrum dicat jam se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quæramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur.' From this habit of impartial investigation, and the necessity which they imposed upon themselves of studying, not only every system of philosophy, but every art and science which pretended to lay its basis in truth, they necessarily took a wider range of erudition, and were more travelled in the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics, in this respect, resembled that ancient incendiary, who stole from the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all suspicion of scepticism. Labore, ingenio, memoria supra omnes pene philosophos fuisse. Quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit. Nonne orationes varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut videbatur) sententias evertendas?' etc. etc.--Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic. Diss. 4.

The difference between the scepticism of the ancients and the moderns is, that the former doubted for the purpose of investigating, as may be exemplified by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, while the latter investigate for the purpose of doubting, as may be seen through most of the philosophical works of Hume. Indeed, the Pyrrhonism of latter days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, but, it must be confessed, more dangerous in its tendency. The happiness of a Christian depends so much upon his belief, that it is natural he should feel alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it steal by degrees into the region from which he is most interested in excluding it, and

poison at last the very spring of his consolation and hope. Still, however, the abuses of doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from indulging mildly and rationally in its use; and there is nothing, I think, more consistent with the humble spirit of Christianity, than the scepticism of him who professes not to extend his distrust beyond the circle of human pursuits and the pretensions of human knowledge. A philosopher of this kind is among the readiest to admit the claims of Heaven upon his faith and adoration: it is only to the wisdom of this weak world that he refuses, or at least delays, his assent; it is only in passing through the shadow of earth that his mind undergoes the eclipse of scepticism. No follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly against the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; and there are passages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of Scripture which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human reason originates. Even the sceptics of antiquity refrained from the mysteries of theology, and, in entering the temples of religion, laid aside their philosophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus thus declares the acquiescence of his sect in the general belief of a superintending Providence : Τῳ μεν βιῳ κατακολουθούντες αδοξάστως φαμεν ειναι θεους και σεβομεν θεους και προνοείν αυτους φαμεν.—Lib. iii. cap. 1. In short, it appears to me that this rational and well-regulated scepticism is the only daughter of the schools that can be selected as a handmaid for piety: he who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to follow a more luminous guide; and if, with an ardent love for truth, he has sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will turn with the more hope to that better world, where all is simple, true, and everlasting for there is no parallax at the zenith—it is only near our troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and erroneous calculations.

THE SCEPTIC.

As the gay tint that decks the vernal rose,1
Not in the flower, but in our vision glows;
As the ripe flavour of Falernian tides,
Not in the wine, but in our taste resides;
So when, with heartfelt tribute, we declare
That Marco's honest and that Susan's fair,
'Tis in our minds, and not in Susan's eyes
Or Marco's life, the worth or beauty lies?
For she, in flat-nosed China, would appear
As plain a thing as Lady Anne is here;

The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether any one perceive them or not, and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them; let not the eye see light or colours, nor the ear hear sounds, let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease.'-Locke, book ii. chap. viii.

Bishop Berkeley, it is well known, extended this doctrine even to primary qualities, and supposed that matter itself has but an ideal existence. How shall we apply the bishop's theory to that period which preceded the formation of man, when our system of sensible things was produced, and the sun shone, and the waters flowed, without any sentient being to witness them? The spectator, whom Whiston supplies, will scarcely solve the difficulty: To speak my mind freely,' says he, 'I believe that the Messias was there actually present.'-Sec Whiston, Of the Mosaic Creation.

And one light joke at rich Loretto's dome
Would rank good Marco with the damned at Rome.

There's no deformity so vile, so base,

That 'tis not somewhere thought a charm, a grace;
No foul reproach that may not steal a beam
From other suns, to bleach it to esteem!
Ask, who is wise?-you'll find the self-same man
A sage in France, a madman in Japan;
And here some head beneath a mitre swells,
Which there had tingled to a cap and bells:
Nay, there may yet some monstrous region be,
Unknown to Cook, and from Napoleon free,
Where C-stl-r-gh would for a patriot pass,
And mouthing M-lgr-ve scarce be deemed an ass!
'List not to reason,' Epicurus cries,

But trust the senses, there conviction lies :22.
Alas! they judge not by a purer light,

Nor keep their fountains more untinged and bright:
Habit so mars them that the Russian swain
Will sigh for train-oil while he sips champagne
And health so rules them, that a fever's heat
Would make even Sh-r-d-n think water sweet!

Just as the mind the erring sense believes,
The erring mind, in turn, the sense deceives;
And cold disgust can find but wrinkles there,
Where passion fancies all that's smooth and fair,
who sees, upon his pillow laid,

A face for which ten thousand pounds were paid,
Can tell, how quick before a jury flies

The spell that mocked the warm seducer's eyes!

Self is the medium least refined of all
Through which opinion's searching beam can fall;
And, passing there, the clearest, steadiest ray
Will tinge its light and turn its line astray.
The Ephesian smith a holier charm espied
In Dian's toe, than all his heaven beside;

This was also the creed of those modern Epicureans whom Ninon de l'Enclos collected around her in the Rue des Tournelles, and whose object seems to have been to decry the faculty of reason, as tending only to embarrass our use of pleasures, without enabling us in any degree to avoid their abuse. Madame des Houlières, the fair pupil of Des Barreaux in the arts of poetry and voluptuousness, has devoted most of her verses to this laudable purpose, and is such a determined foe to reason, that in one of her pastorals she congratulates her sheep on the want of it. St. Evremont speaks thus upon the subject:

'Un mélange incertain d'esprit et de matière Nous fait vivre avec trop ou trop peu de lumière.

Nature, élève-nous à la clarté des anges,
Ou nous abaise an sens des simples animaux.'

Which sentiments I have thus ventured to para-
phrase:

Had man been made, at nature's birth,
Of only flame or only earth,
Had he been formed a perfect whole

Of purely that, or grossly this,
Then sense would ne'er have clouded soul,
Nor soul restrained the sense's bliss.
Oh happy! had his light been strong,
Or had he never shared a light,
Which burns enough to show he's wrong,
Yet not enough to lead him right!

And true religion shines not half so true
On one good living as it shines on two.

Had W-le-t first been pensioned by the Throne,
Kings would have suffered by his praise alone;
And P-ine perhaps, for something snug per ann.,
Had laughed, like W-l1-sly, at all Rights of Man!

But 'tis not only individual minds

That habit tinctures, or that interest blinds;
Whole nations, fooled by falsehood, fear, or pride,
Their ostrich-heads in self-illusion hide;

Thus England, hot from Denmark's smoking meads,
Turns up her eyes at Gallia's guilty deeds;
Thus, selfish still, the same dishonouring chain
She binds in Ireland, she would break in Spain;
While praised at distance, but at home forbid,
Rebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid!
Oh! trust me, Self can cloud the brightest cause,
Or gild the worst; and then, for nations' laws!
Go, good civilian, shut thy useless book,

In force alone for laws of nations look.
Let shipless Danes and whining Yankees dwell
On naval rights, with Grotius and Vattel,
While C--bb-t's1 pirate code alone appears
Sound moral sense to England and Algiers!

Woe to the Sceptic, in these party days,
Who burns on neither shrine the balm of praise!
For him no pension pours its annual fruits,
No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots;

Not his the meed that crowned Don H-kh-m's rhyme,
Nor sees he e'er, in dreams of future time,
Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise,
So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted eyes!
Yet who, that looks to time's accusing leaf,
Where Whig and Tory, thief opposed to thief,
On either side in lofty shame are seen,
While Freedom's form hangs crucified between--
Who, B-rd-tt, who such rival rogues can see,
But flies from both to honesty and thee?

If, giddy with the world's bewildering maze,2
Hopeless of finding, through its weedy ways,
One flower of truth, the busy crowd we shun,
And to the shades of tranquil learning run

1 With most of this writer's latter politics I confess I feel a most hearty concurrence, and perhaps, if I were an Englishman, my pride might lead me to acquiesce in that system of lawless, unlimited sovereignty which he claims so boldly for his country at sea; but viewing the question somewhat more disinterestedly, and as a friend to the common rights of mankind, I cannot help thinking that the doctrines which he maintained upon the Copenhagen expedition and

the differences with America, would establish a species of maritime tyranny, as discreditable to the character of England as it would be galling and unjust to the other nations of the world.

2 The agitation of the ship is one of the chief difficulties which impede the discovery of the longitude at sea; and the tumult and hurry of life are equally unfavourable to that calm level of mind which is necessary to an inquirer after truth.