employed the pens of many eminent men, as greatly tending to improve the morals, and reform the loose and vicious habits in young and tender minds, and fet vice and virtue in their proper colours. For as the mirrour reflects the body, and renders all our perfonal deformities evidently confpicuous; fo these equally expofe the inmost receffes of the mind, the seat of all our darling vices and paffions; and convinces us we have thofe errors and foibles in our compofition, which we were strangers to before, from too fond a partiality and the want of a thorough knowledge of ourselves. This kind of writing was in much efteem, as the true utile dulci of the antients, even in the earliest times, though too much neglected by our modern writers, and often thrown afide for works of a more infe rior nature, and which rather ferve to vitiate than improve our reafoning faculties; and I am convinced, that nothing can be better calculated, or contribute more to form the minds of youth, and give them a just conception of mankind and the world. The moral writer, who copies from real life, and makes the mind of man, that intricate labyrinth, his constant study, muft certainly arrive in time at that knowledge and perfection, which cannot fail of improving the understanding, and making us both wifer and better for fuch inftructions. The judicious Mr. Addifon, fo defervedly as well as univerfally esteemed by all admirers of polite literature, in one of his moral effays, fetting forth the many and fingular advantages arifing from education, and bewailing the misfortune of thofe who have been A 3 been unhappy enough not to be born in a nation where wisdom and knowledge flourish, concludes his difcourfe (after having illuftrated his argument by an example or two) with recommending fuch works as are an incitement to virtue, and have any tendency to moral inftruction. These are his words: Difcourfes on morality, and reflections on human nature, are the best means we can make ufe of to improve our minds and gain a true knowledge of ourselves, and confequently to recover our fouls out of the vice, ignorance, and prejudice, which naturally cleave to them, Among all the various authors who have treated on this fubject, none have carried off a larger portion of fame, than that celebrated French moralift the duke of Rochefoucault, who who has always been ranked by many as the greateft, and unanimously acquired the precedency as a moral writer, and who has been thought to dive deeper into the human heart, than any of his predeceffors; though with what truth or propriety this unlimited merit is bestowed, I own, I am a ftranger to, and cannot give my opinion, according to the honeft fentiments of my heart, without condemning the approbation and univerfal applaufe bestowed on him by the world: and I am fo far from thinking his knowledge of mankind founded on right principles, that, notwithstanding I condemn him for his uncharitable manner of judging, as unbecoming both a man and a Christian, yet, still I cannot help pitying the unhappiness of his choice or fate, be it which it will, A 4 that that must certainly have condemned him in pursuit of his ftudies, to men not only of the loweft but most infamous of the human race; and a ftranger to thofe many noble and generous fentiments, that often fhine forth in a mind conscious of its own integrity, and actuated alone by the true principles of honour, virtue, and religion. However he may have laid himself open to the feverest cenfure, yet I would do him the juftice not to derogate from his real merit; and I must fay, notwithstanding all his faults and unhappy prejudices, he has undoubtedly many ed herecauties, and has discover ed here and there, in feveral places throughout his writings, a mafterly genius, an inimitable fagacity, and an univerfal knowledge: and had he not been fo general and fatyrical, in ma ny |