composers of romance seem not to have been ignorant of the works of several of the ancient Greek and Latin poets. The war of Troy was the subject of many popular poems; nor was there a single striking mythological idea, perhaps, which did not linger behind, and which was not modified by the peculiar manners of the times.

Men lykyn gestis for to here,
And Romans rede in divers manere,
Of Alexandre the conquerour,
Of Julius Cæsar the emperour,
Of Greece and Troy the strong stryf,
Ther many a man lost his lyf.

Cursor Mundi apud Ritson, cv.

"The expedition of Jason in search of the golden fleece, the golden apples of the Hesperides watched by a dragon, the king's daughter, who is an enchantress, and who delivers the hero, is so perfect a specimen of romantic fiction, that we are told by Quadrio, that it was considered by

many as a Grecian romance of chivalry. There is, indeed, scarcely a fable in the poem of Ariosto, of which the elements may not be found in the fictions of the Greeks. In Andromeda, we have the prototype of distressed damsels on the point of being devoured by an ork or dragon, and delivered by a knight. Circe and Calpyso are the originals of Alcina and Armida; and the flying horse of Bellerophon appears to be the dam of the Hippogryf. A sentient tree is described in Virgil's tale of Polydorus; enchanted armour is furnished by Vulcan, both to Achilles and Æneas; and a giant. and his cave are exhibited in the story of Polyphemus. The head of Medusa is the obvious origin of the stupifying shield; and the ring which renders invisible, is to be met with in the fable of Gyges. Camilla and Penthesilea might easily furnish the idea of Marfisa and Bradamante.”

[F the different considerations, stated in the preceding chapter, be carefully combined together, it will not appear surprizing, that, in the judgment of a great majority of individuals, the common analogical phraseology concerning the mind should be mistaken for its genuine philosophical theory. It is only by the patient and persevering exercise of reflection on the subjects of consciousness, that this popular prejudice can be gradually surmounted. In proportion as the thing typified grows familiar to the thoughts, the metaphor will lose its influence on the fancy; and while the signs

we employ continue to discover, by their etymology, their historical origin, they will be rendered, by long and accurate use, virtually equivalent to literal and specific appellations. A thousand instances, perfectly analagous to this, might be easily produced from the figurative words and phrases which occur every moment in ordinary conversation. They who are acquainted with Warburton's account of the natural progress of writing, from hieroglyphics to apparently arbitrary characters, cannot fail to be struck with the similarity between the history of this art, as traced by him, and the gra

dual

dual process by which metaphorical terms conie to be stripped of that literal import, which, at first, pointed them out to the selection of our rude progenitors. Till this process be completed, with respect to the words denoting the powers and operations of the understanding, it is vain for us to expect any success in our inductive researches concerning the principles of the human frame.

"In thus objecting to metaphorical expressions, as solid data for our conclusions in the science of mind, 1 would not be understood to represent them as of no use to the speculative inquirer. To those who delight to trace the history of language, it may, undoubtedly, form an interesting, and not unprofitable em ployment, to examine the circunstances by which they were originally suggested, and the causes which may have diversified them in the case of different nations. To the philologer it may also afford an amusing and harmless gratification (by tracing, to their unknown roots, in some obscure and remote dialects, those words which, in his mother tongue, generally pass for primitives), to shew, that even the terms which denote our most refined and abstracted thoughts, were borrowed originally from some object of external perception. This, indeed, is nothing more than what the considerations, already stated, would have inclined us to expect a priori; and which, how much soever it may astoDish those who have been accustomed to confine their studies to grammar alone, must strike every philosopher, as the natural and necessary consequence of that progressive order in which the mind becomes acquainted with the different objects of its knowledge, and of those general laws which govern human thought in the employment of arbi

trary signs. While the philologer, however, is engaged in these captivating researches, it is highly necessary to remind him, from time to time, that his discoveries belong to the same branch of literature with that which furnishes a large proportion of the materials in our common lexicons and etymological dictionaries; that after he has fold us (for example) that imagination is borrowed from an optical image, and acuteness from a Latin word, denoting the sharpness of a material instrument, we are no more advanced in studying the theory of the human intellect, than we should be in our speculations concerning the functions of money, or the political effects of the national debt, by learning, from Latin etymologists, that the word pecunia, and the phrase æs alienum, had both a reference, in their first origin, to certain circumstances in the early state of Roman manners.

"From these slight hints, considered in their connection with the subject which introduced them, some of my readers must have anticipated the use of them I intend to make, in prosecuting the argument concerning the origin of human knowledge. To those, however, who have not read Mr. Tooke's work, or who, in reading it, have not been aware of the very subtile and refined train of thinking, which latently connects his seemingly desultory etymologies, it may be useful for me to select one or two examples, where Mr. Tooke himself has been at pains to illustrate the practical application, of which he conceived his discoveries to be susceptible, to philosophical discussions. This is the more necessary, that, in general, he seems purposely to have confined himself to the statement of premises, without pointing out (except by implication or innuendo) the purposes to which he means them to be applied;-a mode of writ

literal and primitive sense alone that, according to him, a philosopher is entitled to employ it, even in the present advanced state of science; and whenever he annexes to it a meaning at all different, he imposes equally on himself and on others. To me, on the contrary, it appears, that to appeal to etymology in a philosophical argument (excepting, perhaps, in those cases where the word itself is of philosophical origin), is altogether nugatory; and can serve, at the best, to throw an amusing light on the laws which regulate the operations of human fancy. In the present instance, Mr. Tooke has availed himself of a philological bypothesis (the evidence of which is far from being incontrovertible) to decide, in a few sentences, and, in my opinion, to decide very erroneously, one of the most important questions connected with the theory of morals.

"I shall only mention another example, in which Mr. Tooke has followed out, with still greater intrepidity, his general principle to its most paradoxical and alarniing consequences.

"TRUE, as we now write it; or "TREW, as it was formerly written; "means simply and merely,-that "which is TROWED. And instead "of being a rare commodity upon "earth, except only in words, there "is nothing but TRUTH in the world. "That every man, in his commu"nication with others, should speak "that which he TROWETH, is of so "great importance to mankind, that it

"eternal, immutable, everlasting "TRUTH; unless mankind, such as "they are at present, be also eter"nal, immutable, and everlasting."

"But what connection, it may be asked, have these quotations with the question about the origin of human knowledge? The answer will appear obvious to those who have looked into the theories which have been built on the general principle just referred to;-a principle which it seems to have been the main object of Mr. Tooke's book to confirm, by an induction of particulars; and which, if it were admitted as sound, would completely undermine the foundations both of logic and of ethics. In truth, it is from this general principle, combined with a fact universally acknowledged among philosophers (the impossibility of speaking about mind or its phenomena, without employing a metaphorical phraseology) that so many of our late philologists and grammarians, dazzled, as it should seem, with the novelty of these discoveries, have shewn a disposition to conclude (as Diderot and Helvetius formerly did from other premises) that the only real knowledge we possess relates to the objects of our external senses; and that we can annex no idea to the word mind itself, but that of matter in the most subtile and attenuated form which imagination can lend it. Nor are these the only, or the most dangerous consequences, involved in Locke's maxim, when thus understood. I point them out at present, in preference to others, as being more nearly related to the subject of this essay.

"Mr. Tooke has given some countenance to these inferences, by the connection in which he introduces the following etymologies from Vossius.

"Animus, Anima, ПIveypa and