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and truths that can neither be communicated or received without effort of thought, as well as patience of attention.

Che s'io non erro al calcular de' punti,
Par ch' Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
E 'l Somaro e 'l Castron si sian congiunti.
Il tempo d'Apuleio più non si nomini :

Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino,
Mille Asini a' miei dì rassembran huomini !"
DI SALVATORE ROSA Satir. I. 1. 10.

CHAPTER X

A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the imagination or plastic power-On pedantry and pedantic expressions-Advice to young authors respecting publication-Various anecdotes of the author's literary life, and the progress of his opinions in religion and politics.

Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I 10 met with it elsewhere." Neither have I. I constructed it myself from the Greek words, eis èv nλáttew, to shape into one; because, having to convey a new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import of 15 the word, imagination. "But this is pedantry!" Not necessarily so, I hope. If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated by 20 that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who 25 either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his musæum

or laboratory; even though the latter pedant instead of desiring his wife to make the tea should bid her add to the quant. suff. of thea Sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen saturated with caloric. To use the colloquial (and in truth somewhat vulgar) metaphor, if the pedant of the cloyster, and the 5 pedant of the lobby, both smell equally of the shop, yet the odour from the Russian binding of good old authenticlooking folios and quartos is less annoying than the steams from the tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the pedantry of the scholar should betray a little ostentation, yet a well- 10 conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous incumbrance of tails.

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The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student's attention from the DEGREES of things, which alone form the vocabulary of common life, and to direct it to the KIND abstracted from degree. Thus the chemical student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on the heat in ice, 20 or on latent and fixible light. In such discourse the instructor has no other alternative than either to use old words with new meanings (the plan adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia ;) or to introduce new terms, after the example of Linnæus, and the framers of the present chemical nomen- 25 clature. The latter mode is evidently preferable, were it only that the former demands a twofold exertion of thought in one and the same act. For the reader, or hearer, is required not only to learn and bear in mind the new definition; but to unlearn, and keep out of his view, the old and 30 habitual meaning; a far more difficult and perplexing task, and for which the mere semblance of eschewing pedantry seems to me an inadequate compensation. Where, indeed, it is in our power to recall an unappropriate term that had without sufficient reason become obsolete, it is doubtless 35

a less evil to restore than to coin anew. Thus to express in one word, all that appertains to the perception, considered as passive, and merely recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the word sensuous; because sensual is not at 5 present used, except in a bad sense, or at least as a moral distinction; while sensitive and sensible would each convey a different meaning. Thus too I have followed Hooker, Sanderson, Milton, &c., in designating the immediateness of any act or object of knowledge by the word intuition, used 10 sometimes subjectively, sometimes objectively, even as we use the word, thought, now as the thought, or act of thinking, and now as a thought, or the object of our reflection; and we do this without confusion or obscurity. The very words, objective and subjective, of such constant recur15 rence in the schools of yore, I have ventured to re-introduce, because I could not so briefly or conveniently by any more familiar terms distinguish the percipere from the percipi. Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the terms, THE REASON, and THE UNDERSTANDING, encouraged and con20 firmed by the authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the revolution.

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"both life, and sense,

Fancy, and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and REASON is her being,
DISCURSIVE or INTUITIVE: discourse *

Is oftest your's, the latter most is our's,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same.
PARADISE LOST, Book V.

I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable for

:

*But for sundry notes on Shakespeare, &c., and other pieces which have fallen in my way, I should have deemed it unnecessary to observe, that discourse here, or elsewhere, does not mean what we now call discoursing; but the discursion of the mind, the processes of generalization and subsumption, of deduction and conclusion. Thus, Philosophy has hitherto been DISCURSIVE; while Geometry is always and essentially IN

TUITIVE.

I had previous and higher motives in my own conviction of the importance, nay, of the necessity of the distinction, as both an indispensable condition and a vital part of all sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or theological. To establish this distinction was one main object of THE 5 FRIEND; if even in a biography of my own literary life I can with propriety refer to a work, which was printed rather than published, or so published that it had been well for the unfortunate author, if it had remained in manuscript! I have even at this time bitter cause for remembering that, 10 which a number of my subscribers have but a trifling motive for forgetting. This effusion might have been spared; but I would feign flatter myself, that the reader will be less austere than an oriental professor of the bastinado, who during an attempt to extort per argumentum baculinum 15 a full confession from a culprit, interrupted his outcry of pain by reminding him, that it was a mere digression!" All this noise, Sir! is nothing to the point, and no sort of answer to my QUESTIONS! Ah! but, (replied the sufferer,) it is the most pertinent reply in nature to your blows.

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An imprudent man of common goodness of heart cannot but wish to turn even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is possible. If therefore any one of the readers of this semi-narrative should be preparing or intending a periodical work, I warn him, in the first place, 25 against trusting in the number of names on his subscription list. For he cannot be certain that the names were put down by sufficient authority; or, should that be ascertained, it still remains to be known, whether they were not extorted by some over zealous friend's importunity; whether the 30 subscriber had not yielded his name, merely from want of courage to answer, no! and with the intention of dropping the work as soon as possible. One gentleman procured me nearly a hundred names for THE FRIEND, and not only took frequent opportunity to remind me of his success in his 35

canvas, but laboured to impress my mind with the sense of the obligation, I was under to the subscribers; for (as he very pertinently admonished me,) “fifty-two shillings a year was a large sum to be bestowed on one individual, where 5 there were so many objects of charity with strong claims to the assistance of the benevolent." Of these hundred patrons ninety threw up the publication before the fourth number, without any notice; though it was well known to them, that in consequence of the distance, and the slowness and irreguIo larity of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks beforehand; each sheet of which stood me in five pence previous to its arrival at my printer's; though the subscription money was not to be received till the twenty-first week after the commence15 ment of the work; and lastly, though it was in nine cases

out of ten impracticable for me to receive the money for two or three numbers without paying an equal sum for the postage.

In confirmation of my first caveat, I will select one fact 20 among many. On my list of subscribers, among a considerable number of names equally flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork, with his address. He might as well have been an Earl of Bottle, for aught I knew of him, who had been content to reverence the peerage in abstracto, rather than in 25 concretis. Of course THE FRIEND was regularly sent as far, if I remember right, as the eighteenth number: i, e. till a fortnight before the subscription was to be paid. And lo! just at this time I received a letter from his Lordship, reproving me in language far more lordly than courteous for 30 my impudence in directing my pamphlets to him, who knew nothing of me or my work! Seventeen or eighteen numbers of which, however, his Lordship was pleased to retain, probably for the culinary or post-culinary conveniences of his servants.

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Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to deviate

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