philosophers, who have, in a few words, stated the substance, the object, and the result of all morality, and politics, and law. "Nihil est quod adhuc de republicâ putem dictum, et quo possim longius progredi, nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum esse illud, sine injuriâ non posse, sed hoc verissimum, sine summâ justitiâ rempublicam geri nullo modo posse."* "Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society, and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all."+ * Cic. De Repub. lib. ii. ↑ Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 207. LIFE OF SIR THOMAS THOMAS MORE. ARISTOTLE and Bacon, the greatest philosophers of the ancient and modern world, agree in representing poetry as being of a more excellent nature than history. Agreeably to the predominance of mere understanding in Aristotle's mind, he alleges as his cause of preference that poetry regards general truth, or conformity to universal nature; while history is conversant only with a confined and accidental truth, dependent on time, place, and circumstance. The ground assigned by Bacon is such as naturally issued from that fusion of imagination with reason, which constitutes his philosophical genius. Poetry is ranked more highly by him, because the poet presents us with a pure excellence and an unmingled grandeur, not to be found in the coarse realities of life or of history; but which the mind of man, although not destined to reach, is framed to contemplate with delight. The general difference between biography and history is obvious. There have been many men in every age whose lives are full of interest and instruction; but who, having never taken a part in public affairs, are altogether excluded from the province of the historian: there have been also, probably, |