66

"As for this book of Aphorifms, it is "like my lord Bacon's of the fame title, a "book of jefts, or a grave collection of trite " and trifling obfervations; of which though many are true and certain, yet they fignify "nothing, and may afford diverfion, but no " inftruction; most of them being much in"ferior to the fayings of the wife men of "Greece, which yet are fo low and mean, "that we are entertained every day with 66 more valuable fentiments at the table-con"verfation of ingenious and learned men."

I am unwilling however to leave him in total difgrace, and will therefore quote from another Preface a paffage lefs reprehenfible.

"Some gentlemen have been difingenuous " and unjuft to me, by wrefting and forcing my meaning in the Preface to another book, as if I condemned and expofed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly " honoured and efteemed all men of fuperior "literature and erudition; and that I only ❝ undervalued falfe or fuperficial learning, "that fignifies nothing for the service of VOL. III. H "mankind;

"

"mankind; and that, as to phyfick, ^I èx"prefsly affirmed that learning must be joined "with native genius to make a phyfician of "the firft rank; but if those talents are fepaໄດ້ rated, I afferted, and do still infist, that a "man of native fagacity and diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser, "than a heavy notional scholar, encumbered with a heap of confufed ideas.

He was not only a poet and a phyfician, but produced likewife a work of a different kind, A true and impartial Hiftory of the ConSpiracy against King William, of glorious Memory, in the Year 1695. This I have never feen, but fuppofe it at least compiled with integrity. He engaged likewise in theological controverfy, and wrote two books against the Arians; Juft Prejudices against the Arian Hy pothefis; and Modern Arians unmasked. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or Moral Duties confidered apart from Pofitive; with fome Obfervations on the Defirableness and Neceffity of a fupernatural Revelation. This was the last book that he published. He left behind him The accomplished Preacher,

or an

Elay

Effay upon Divine Eloquence; which was printed after his death by Mr. White of Nayland in Effex, the minister who attended his deathbed, and teftified the fervent piety of his laft hours. He died on the eighth of October, 1729.

BLACKMORE, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than he deserved; his name was fo long used to point every epigram upon dull writers, that it became at laft a bye-word of contempt: but it deferves observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that his life paffed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehenfion naturally turned upon him many eyes defirous to espy faults, which many tongues would have made hafte to publish.

But

those who could not blame, could at least forbear to praise, and therefore of his private life and domeftick character there are no memorials.

As an author he may juftly claim the honours of magnanimity. The inceffant attacks of his enemies, whether ferious or merry, are never discovered to have difturbed his quiet, or to have leffened his confidence in himself; they neither awed him to filence nor to caution; they neither provoked him

to

2

to petulance, nor depreffed him to complaint. While the diftributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either defpifed or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned afide to quiet them by civility, or reprefs them by confutation.

He depended with great fecurity on his own powers, and perhaps was for that reason lefs diligent in perufing books. His literature was, I think, but fmall. What he knew of antiquity, I fufpect him to have gathered from modern compilers: but though he could not boast of much critical knowledge, his mind was ftored with general principles, and he left minute researches to thofe whom he confidered as little minds.

With this difpofition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a magnificent defign, he was careless of particular and fubordinate elegancies; he ftudied no niceties of verfification; he waited for no felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in which they were prefented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own perform