When works of importance are pressing,generals themselves may take up the pick-axe and the spade;but in the ordinary course of things,when that pressing necessity is over,such tools are left in the hands destined to use them --the hands of common soldiers and peasants.I approve,therefore,very much the devotion of a studious man at Christ-church,who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail with God,as devout persons are apt to do,and,amongst other particular thanks givings,acknowledging the divine goodness in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries!These men court fame,as well as their betters,by such means as God has given them to acquire it:and Littleton exerted all the genius he had,when he made a dictionary,though Stephens did not.They deserve encouragement,however,while they continue to compile,and neither affect wit,nor presume to reason.
There is a fourth class,of much less use than these,but of much greater name.Men of the first rank in learning,and to whom the whole tribe of scholars bow with reverence.A man must be as indifferent as I am to common censure or approbation,to avow a thorough contempt for the whole business of these learned lives;for all the researches into antiquity,for all the systems of chronology and history,that we owe to the immense labors of a Scaliger,a Bochart,a Petavius,an Usher,and even a Marsham.The same materials are common to them all;but these materials are few,and there is a moral impossibility that they should ever have more.They have combined these into every form that can be given to them:they have supposed,they have guessed,they have joined disjointed passages of different authors,and broken traditions of uncertain originals,of various people,and of centuries remote from one another as well as from ours.In short,that they might leave no liberty untaken,even a wild fantastical similitude of sounds has served to prop up a system.As the materials they have are few,so are the very best,and such as pass for authentic,extremely precarious;as some of these learned persons themselves confess.
Julius Africanus,Eusebius,and George the monk,opened the principal sources of all this science;but they corrupted the waters.Their point of view was to make profane history and chronology agree with sacred;though the latter chronology is very far from being established with the clearness and certainty necessary to make it a rule.For this purpose,the ancient monuments,that these writers conveyed to posterity,were digested by them according to the system they were to maintain:and none of these monuments were delivered down in their original form,and genuine purity.The Dynasties of Manetho,for instance,are broken to pieces by Eusebius,and such fragments of them as suited his design,are stuck into his work.We have,we know,no more of them.The Codex Alexandrinus we owe to George the monk.We have no other authority for it;and one cannot see without amazement such a man as Sir John Marsam undervaluing this authority in one page,and building his system upon it in the next.He seems even by the lightness of his expressions,if I remember well,for it is long since I looked into his canon,not to be much concerned what foundation his system had,so he showed his skill in forming one,and in reducing the immense antiquity of the Egyptians within the limits of the Hebraic calculation.In short,my lord,all these systems are so many enchanted castles;they appear to be something,they are nothing but appearances:like them too,dissolve the charm,and they vanish from the sight.To dissolve the charm,we must begin at the beginning of them:
the expression may be odd,but it is significant.We must examine scrupulously and indifferently the foundations on which they lean:and when we find these either faintly probable,or grossly improbable,it would be foolish to expect any thing better in the superstructure.This science is one of those that are "a limine salutandae."To do thus much may be necessary,that grave authority may not impose on our ignorance:to do more,would be to assist this very authority in imposing false science upon us.I had rather take the Darius whom Alexander conquered,for the son of Hystaspes,and make as many anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer,than sacrifice half my life to collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary.
