found it there; it may be there "totidem litteris,' but it is not totidem verbis,' or I am much mistaken.

After reading all Plato with great reluctance, I perceived some shadow of the trinity for which he is so much honoured. It is in the sixth book of his Chimerical Republic, in which he says-"Let us speak of the son, the wonderful production of good, and his perfect image." But unfortunately he discovers this perfect image of God to be the sun. It was therefore the physical sun, which with the word and the father composed the platonic trinity.

In the Epinomis of Plato there are very curious absurdities, one of which I translate as reasonably as I can, for the convenience of the reader.

"Know that there are eight virtues in heaven: I have observed them, which is easy to all the world. The sun is one of its virtues, the moon another; the third is the assemblage of stars; and the five planets, with these three virtues, make the number eight. Be careful of thinking that these virtues, or those which they contain, and which animate them, either move of themselves or are carried in vehicles; be careful, I say, of believing, that some may be gods and others not; that some may be adorable, and others such as we should neither adore or invoke. They are all brothers; each has his share; we owe them all the same honours; they fill all the situations which the word assigned to them, when it formed the visible universe."

Here is the word already found: we must now find the three persons. They are in the second letter from Plato to Dionysius, which letters assuredly are not forged; the style is the same as that of his dialogues.. He often says to Dionysius and Dion things very difficult to comprehend, and which we might believe to be written in numbers; but he also tells us very clear ones, which have been found true a long time after him. For example, he expresses himself thus in his seventh letter to Dion:

"I have been convinced that all states are very badly governed; there is scarcely any good institution:

or administration. We see as it were, day after day, that all follows the path of fortune rather than that of wisdom."

After this short digression on temporal affairs, let us return to spiritual ones, to the trinity. Plato says to Dionysius:

"The king of the universe is surrounded by his works: all is the effect of his grace. The finest of things have their first cause in him; the second in perfection have in him their second cause, and he is further the third cause of works of the third degree."

The trinity, such as we acknowledge, could not be recognised in this letter; but it was a great point to have in a Greek author a guarantee of the dogmas of the dawning church. Every Greek church was therefore platonic, as every Latin church was peripatetic, from the commencement of the third century. Thus two Greeks whom, we have never understood, were the masters of our opinions until the time in which men at the end of two thousand years were obliged to think for themselves.

SECTION II.

Questions on Plato and on some other Trifles. Plato in saying to the Greeks what so many philosophers of other nations have said before him, in assuring them that there is a supreme intelligence which arranged the universe, did he think that this supreme intelligence resided in a single place, like a king of the east in his seraglio? Or rather did he believe that this powerful intelligence spread itself everywhere like light, or a being still more delicate, prompt, active, and penetrating than light? The god of Plato, in a word, is he in matter, or is he separated from it? Oh you who have read Plato attentively, that is to say seven or eight fantastical dreams hidden in some garret in Europe, if ever these questions reach you; I implore you to answer them.

The barbarous island of Cassiterides, in which men lived in the woods in the time of Plato, has finally produced philosophers who are as much beyond him as

Plato was beyond those of his contemporaries who reasoned not at all.

Among these philosophers, Clarke is perhaps altogether the clearest, the most profound, the most methodical and the strongest of all those who have spoken of the Supreme Being.

When he gave his excellent book to the public he found a young gentleman of the county of Gloucester who candidly advanced objections as strong as his demonstrations. We can see them at the end of the first volume of Clarke; it was not on the necessary existence of the Supreme Being that he reasoned; it was on his infinity and immensity.

It appears not indeed, that Clarke has proved that there is a being who penetrates intimately all which exists, and that this being whose properties we cannot conceive has the property of extending himself to the greatest imaginable distance.

The great Newton has demonstrated that there is a void in nature; but what philosopher could demonstrate to me that God is in this void; that he touches it; that he fills it? How, bounded as we are, can we attain to the knowledge of these mysteries? Does it not suffice, that it proves to us that a supreme master exists? It is not given to us to know what he is nor how he is.

It seems as if Locke and Clarke had the keys of the intelligible world. Locke has opened all the apart ments which can be entered; but has not Clarke wished to penetrate a little above the edifice?

How could a philosopher like Samuel Clarke, after so admirable a work on the existence of God, write so pitiable a one on matters of fact?

How could Benedict Spinosa, who had as much profundity of mind as Samuel Clarke, after raising himself to the most sublime metaphysics, how could he not perceive that a supreme intelligence presides over works visibly arranged with a supreme intelligence—if it is true after all that such is the system of Spinosa?

How could Newton, the greatest of men, comment upon the Apocalypse, as we have already remarked?

How could Locke, after having so well developed the human understanding, degrade his own in another work? I fancy I see eagles, who after darting into a cloud go to rest on a dunghill.

POETS.

A YOUNG man on leaving college deliberates whether he shall be an advocate, a physican, a theologian, or a poet-whether he shall take care of our body, our soul, or our entertainment. We have already spoken of advocates and physicians; we will now speak of the prodigious fortune which is sometimes made by the theologian.

The theologian becomes pope, and has not only his theological valets, cooks, singers, chamberlains, physicians, surgeons, sweepers, agnus dei makers, confectioners, and preachers, but also his poet. I know not what inspired personage was the poet of Leo X., as David was for some time the poet of Saul.

It is surely of all the employments in a great house that which is the most useless. The kings of England, who have preserved in their island many of the ancient usages which are lost on the continent, have their official poet.* He is obliged once a year to make an ode in praise of St. Cecilia,+ who played so marvellously on the organ or psalterion, that an angel descended from the ninth heaven to listen to her more conveniently-the harmony of the psaltery, in ascending from this place to the land of angels, necessarily losing a small portion of its volume.

Moses is the first poet that we know of; but it is thought that before him the Chaldeans, the Syrians, and the Indians practised poetry, since they possessed music. Nevertheless, the fine canticle which Moses

* And have still; those too who officially manufacture the most surprising hexameters.-T.

+ The odes of Dryden and Pope doubtless misled Voltaire into this supposition. How much more stupendous the misconception, if some future foreign writer should assert, that on the death of every monarch it was the province of his laureate to write a Vision of Judgment!-T.

chaunted with his sister Miriam, when they came out of the red sea, is the most ancient poetical monument in hexameter verse that we possess.. I am not of the opinion of those impious and ignorant rogues, Newton, Le Clerc, and others, who prove that all this was written about eight hundred years after the event, and who insolently maintain that Moses could not write in Hebrew, since Hebrew is only a comparatively modern dialect of the Phenician, of which Moses could know nothing at all. I examine not with the learned Huet how Moses was able to sing so well, who stammered and could not speak.

If we listened to many of these authors, Moses would be less ancient than Orpheus, Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod. We perceive at the first glance the absurdity of this opinion; as if a Greek could be as ancient as a Jew.

Neither will I reply to those impertinent persons who suspect that Moses is only an imaginary personage, a fabulous imitation of the fable of the ancient Bacchus; and that all the prodigies of Bacchus, since attributed to Moses, were sung in orgies before it was known that Jews existed in the world. This idea refutes itself: it is obvious to good sense that it is impossible Bacchus could exist before Moses.

We have still however an excellent Jewish poet undeniably anterior to Horace-king David; and we know well how infinitely superior the Miserere' is to the 'Justum ac tenacem propositi virum.'

But what is most astonishing, legislators and kings have been our earliest poets. We find even at present people so good as to become poets for kings. Virgil indeed had not the office of poet to Augustus, nor Lucan that of poet to Nero; but I confess that it would have debased the profession not a little to make gods of either the one or the other.

It is asked, why poetry, being so unnecessary to the world, occupies so high a rank among the fine arts? The same question may be put with regard to music. Poetry is the music of the soul, and above all of great and of feeling souls.