time of life when he fet out, being at leaft 47, and other eircumstances, incline us rather to find the motive in his health; on which account he was folicitous to try the mineral waters of different countries; and he generally travelled on horseback for the fame reason, hardly ever finding himself better, to use his own curious mode of expreffion, que le cul fur la felle. The gravel which he said he had acquired de la liberalité des ans, and the cholic, left him but few intervals of eafe. Yet had he, as we find in his Effays, no opinion of medicine. The ufe of mineral waters he thought the fimpleft and the safest. He had tried the most celebrated in France, and was defirous to vifit thofe of Lorraine, Switzerland, and Tuscany. Hence the origin of the books before us, in which we find him paffing from one watering-place to another, to fupport a fhattered conftitution, and in which his attention to that particular object has rendered this pofthumous work * frequently infipid and uninteresting. We are not, however, to confider this journal of travels as a work which the Author had the leaft idea of publishing. It feems to have been intended rather for the purposes of private recollection, and as a kind of domestic record of the progress he had gone through, and the little incidents he had met with. Yet ftill it is curious, as it exhibits the fpirit, the genius, and manners of Montaigne, in a way that cannot be mistaken. The fame egotism, the fame felf-attention. You see nobody but Montaigne: nobody is spoken of but Montaigne; though he has feveral fellow-travellers, they are non-entities here. And it is not only curious, but is rendered even valuable, by many characteristic and altogether peculiar ftrokes of his pencil. The fingular light in which he contemplated his objects; that energy, fincerity, and ardour, with which his philofophic genius impregnated all his ideas are obvious in this publication. It at the fame time be confidered as an historical monument may of the state of Rome, and of a great part of Italy, fuch as be found it towards the clofe of the fixteenth century. But let us hear what his Editor, M. De Querlon, fays on this fubject, in his preliminary discourse.. At the time of Montaigne's travelling into Italy, (1580) that beautiful country, covered with the ruins and fragments of antiquity, had for two centuries been the region of the arts. It had been enriched by the works of Palladio, Vignole, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Julio Romano, Corregio, Titian, Paul Veronefe, Tintoret, &c. It is true, Guido, Albano, Dominichino, Published about 180 years after the death of the Author. The MS. was lately found in an old cheft in the Chateau.de Montaigne, in the province of Perigord. 6 Lanfranc, Lanfranc, Peter of Cortona, Annibal Caraccio, and a number of great mafters befide, that followed the former, had not yet produced that immenfe quantity of noble works which adorn the churches and palaces of Italy. Gregory XIII. at that time Pope, was much lefs taken up with attending to the arts, than with the promotion of public inftitutions and public works. Sextus the Fifth who came to the fee four years after this journey, added much more to the embellishment of Rome, in lefs than fix years than Gregory had done in twice that time. Nevertheless this capital, with those of Florence and Venice, and many others that Montaigne vifited, had objects fufficient to attract the attention of the traveller, by their riches, and by monuments of every kind, which the arts had already exhibited. Thus our traveller found matter enough for obfervation. With that keen and animated imagination, that picturesque turn which diftinguishes his Effays, could he, poffibly, with coldness behold the furrounding arts of Greece? If the journal of his travels contains few defcriptions of ftatues, pictures, and the reft of thofe objects with which modern travellers fill their narratives, and generally copy from one another; it is, as he fays, because there were books enough at the time, wherein all these matters were to be found.' Here we agree with M. Querlon, but, though not prodigally descriptive, it is evident, that he was particularly ftruck with the noble monuments of antiquity which he beheld. It was there he fought the GENIUS of immortal Rome; that GENIUS, which was for ever prefent with him, and familiar to his fancy and his foul! which he had purfued with the most penetrating eye through the remains of claffic art, through the pure philo fophic page of the NATURAL PLUTARCH! That GENIUS, like the Roman hero, who was found mournfully reclining on the ruins of Carthage, retained a melancholy dignity amid the monuments that furrounded him, and looked awfully on the afhes of the great capital of the world. But let us remember that Montaigne holds the pencil on this fubject; and refer the Reader to his more animated hand. L. ART. III. Monde Primitif, &c.-The Primitive World analyfed and compared I' IN this fecond volume of his magnificent work, M. De Gebelin has armed himself for the reduction of an ideal world. So confidered, at leaft, has been the theory of univer For an account of the first volume, fee our laft Appendix, publifhed in July 1774. L12 fal fal grammar by many learned men, who have turned their thoughts upon the fubject. If it be true that the principles of grammar, like thofe of harmony, are founded in nature, and originally the fame through all human existence, it is equally true, that they are fo infinitely modified as to leave few traces of their primary analogy. Indeed, grammar itself could hardly exift in the first rude elements of fpeech. It confifts in the right conftruction of fentences, the connexion, combination, and dependencies of words.. But as the firft fpeech of man could only be formed of individual, appropriated founds expreffive of material objects, or of fenfible paffions and wants, thefe would, of courfe, have no obvious connexion. They would continue in their infulated ftate, till long appropriation had brought them together with greater facility; and even then, while fociety was immature, its wants few, and its words unwritten, the connexions of fpeech would be fimple and inconfiderable. M. De Gebelin, however, with the fpirit of modern adventure, and with a degree of courage equal to his capacity, has failed in queft of these undiscovered countries. He has already made fo long a voyage, that we defpair of finding room for any thing more than an imperfect chart of his passage, and a fmall extract from his fpeech at fetting out. The origin of fpeech, fays he, is a problem on which a number of learned men have exercised themselves with different degrees of fuccefs; but which has never yet been refolved, because a fufficient number of obfervations had not been collected for the purpofe; fo that every thing was loft in the wanderings of hypothefes, as it always happens when facts are to be fupplied by the force of genius or imagination. Some of thefe have fuppofed, that fpeech or language was the pure effect of human invention. They thought that for a long time men were capable of nothing but fimple cries; that by fome happy accidents they perceived that they were capable, by this means, of expreffing not only their fenfations but their ideas, of painting material objects by certain founds, and that thefe inconfiderable beginnings, by flow and painful degrees, gave rife to languages. Others being unable to conceive how man could invent an art for which he had no natural talent or propenfity, and defpairing of finding out the phyfical caufes of language, have referred every thing, in the end, to the omnipotence of the Deity. They fuppofe, that he communicated to men even the primary words they made ufe of, and that being themselves entirely paffive in this refpect, they received every thing from him, even to grammar itself. • Thefe These fyftems perfe&ly oppofite to each other, taken absolutely as they stood, appeared equally falfe, though, in a limited fense, they were true. Language is from the Deity, in this refpect, that he formed man with the neceflary organs of fpeech; that he gave him a capacity for fentiment and ideas, put him under a neceffity of expreffing them, and furnished him with models proper to direct him in that expreffion. But then to difcover and unfold thefe organs, to imitate these models, to follow those combinations, of which he was naturally capable, and on that fmall number of radicals allowed him by Nature, to raise fuch an immense superstructure of words, as, to be properly known and understood, would re quire the labour of the longeft life, all this was the effect of human industry. And this was not the confequence of any affociated agreement, but an effect of that imitative talent communicated to us by Nature, and of those wants of which the has made us fenfible; for it would have been impoffible for beings who could not speak, and who had no idea of the art, to agree about the formation of a language, and to form certain determinate words. Neither could it be the effect of imitation that was flow, fortuitous, and accidental, becaufe man, from the firft, was. under a neceffity of ufing fpeech, was already furnished with organs and models of language; and Nature always advances to her final purposes with a fure and rapid progrefs; the natural fentiment itself fuggefted the cry or found necellary to express it, the natural idea fupplied the tone of voice proper to make it intelligible, and to give it a diftinct application. The perfection of language, and the multiplication of words for the expression of factitious ideas, depended folely on the induftry of men, and on a mutual agreement and understanding amongst them; but this period is at an immenfe distance from the birth of a language first formed by the natural genius of. man, and determined by his wants. When we fay that language arose from imitation, we do not take the word in its moft limited fenfe, fo as to contine it to the imitation of the founds and cries of natural objects, the howling of winds, the roar of thunder, the lowing of cattle, the cries of animals, even thofe of man himself, from whence refult all those words included under the general name of Onomatopoiea. We extend this name, likewife, to an imi. tation founded on analogy, occafioned by the relation one perceives between the qualities of the object and thofe of the organs of the voice. It was impoffible to reprefent all objects by the Onomatopoiea; hence fuch tones were made use of as bore the greateft analogy to the idea they excited: troublesome L13 objects objects were expreffed by fharp, harsh tones; moving or running objects by tones of the fame kind; the fixed and the flow by heavy and fixed founds: and on all these occasions, those tones become the determined names of the objects, and the fources of immenfe families, into which all thofe beings that have qualities in common with them, are incorporated.' Such was the origin and discovery of language, the capacity for which was given to man by his Creator, and the resources of which he found in that variety of modulation and articulated founds which his natural fenfations impreffed upon his vocal organs. In order to give our Readers as perfect an idea as our limits will allow, of this volume on Univerfal Grammar, we shall exhibit a fhort analysis of the whole. It is divided into five books. THE FIRST confifts of general and preliminary obfervations. The etymology of the word is given; then follows a definition of that word, not metaphyfical, but historical and practical, fuch as leads to the natural and neceffary laws of grammar. The word is fhewn to exift of neceffity, and that neceffity to be determined by the objects it defcribes. The objects themselves are examined; we are inftructed in what manner grammar enables us to describe them; what qualities it ought to poffefs in order to attain this end; what advantages arife from thefe obfervations; and what it is that diftinguishes particular from univerfal grammar. THE SECOND book contains the materials of grammar, or the words whereby ideas are painted. Here we see that the pictures of our ideas exhibited by words must neceffarily confift of different parts, in order to make the representation diftinct. The diftinguishing characteristics, and the number of thefe parts are laid down, together with the three different departments or divifions of verbal painting, which are the enunciative, where the subject of the painting is accompanied by its inherent qualities; the active, where the fubject is painted with qualities relative to other objects, on which it has fome impreffion or effect; and the paffive, where the fame fubject is defcribed as receiving impreffions from another object. The fecond part of this book is defigned as an explication of the ten divifions, into which the Author has diftributed all the words that are to be taken into his difcourfe concerning all languages. As this forms the basis of every thing that conftitutes grammar, the fubject is more minutely canyaffed, and takes up a confiderable part of the volume. It is, indeed, and without a compliment, a very curious book. At the beginning the noun is confidered; its use and different fpecies are defcribed; its etymology, as high even as the primitive language; the manner in which it unites the dif ferent |