In the former case, what people could not in strictness be. stow upon their Maker, they could easily render unfit for the use of men; and in the latter, if one cannot grasp what is above the reach of reason, one can without difficulty say a thousand things which are contrary to reason.

But though scholastic theology be the principal, it is not the only subject of learned nonsense. In other branches of pneumatology we often meet with rhapsodies of the same kind. I shall take an example from a late honourable writer, who, though he gives no quarter to the rants of others, sometimes falls into the ranting strain himself: "Pleasures are the objects of self-love; happiness, that of reason. Reason is so far from depriving us of the first, that happiness consists in a series of them; and as this can neither be attained nor enjoyed securely out of society, a due use of our reason makes social and self-love coincide, or even become in effect the same. The condition wherein we are born and bred, the very condition so much complained of, prepares us for this coincidence, the foundation of all human happiness; and our whole nature, appetite, passion, and reason concur to promote it. As our parents loved themselves in us, so we love ourselves in our children, and in those to whom we are most nearly related by blood. Thus far instinct improves self-love. Reason improves it farther. We love ourselves in our neighbours, and in our friends too, with Tully's leave ; for if friendship is formed by a kind of sympathy, it is cultivated by good offices. Reason proceeds. We love ourselves in loving the political body whose members we are ; and we love ourselves when we extend our benevolence to all mankind. These are the genuine effects of reason."* I would not be understood to signify that there is no meaning in any clause of this quotation, but that the greater part of it is unmeaning; and that the whole, instead of exhibiting a connected train of thought, agreeably to the author's intention, presents us only with a few trifling or insignificant phrases speciously strung together. The very first sentence is justy exceptionable in this respect. Had he said, "Pleasure is the object of appetite, happiness that of self-love," there had been some sense in it; as it stands, I suspect there is none. Pope, the great admirer and versifier of this philosophy, hath succeeded much better in contradistinguishing the provinces of reason and passion, where he says,

Reason the card, but passion is the gale."+ This always the mover, that the guide. As the card serves equally to point to us the course that we must steer, whatever be the situation of the port we are bound for, east or west, south or north, so reason serves equally to indicate the means Essay on Man, Ep. ii.

* Bolingb. Ph. Fr., 51.

*

that we must employ for the attainment of any end, whatever that end be (right or wrong, profitable or pernicious), which passion impels us to pursue. All that follows of the passage quoted abounds with the like loose and indefinite declamation. If the author had any meaning, a point very questionable, he hath been very unhappy and very unphilosophical in expressing it. What are we to make of the coincidence or sameness of self-love and social affection produced by reason? What of parents loving themselves in their children? &c., &c. Anything you please, or nothing. It is a saying of Hobbes, which this author hath quoted with deserved commendation, that "words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools." The thought is ingenious and happily expressed. I sha. only remark upon it, that this noble writer may be produced as one of many witnesses, to prove that it is not peculiar to fools to fall into this error. He is a wise

man indeed who never mistakes these counters for legal coin. So much for the learned nonsense; and doubtless, if nonsense ever deserves to be exposed, it is when she has the ar rogance to assume the garb of wisdom

3. THE PRofound.

I proceed to another species, which I shall denominate the profound, and which is most commonly to be met with in po. litical writings. Nowhere else do we find the merest nothings set off with an air of solemnity, as the result of very deep thought and sage reflection. Of this kind, however, I shall produce a specimen, which, in confirmation of a remark made in the preceding paragraph, shall be taken from a justly celebrated tract, of a justly celebrated pen: ""Tis agreed," says Swift," that in all governments there is an absolute and unlimited power, which naturally and originally seems to be placed in the whole body, wherever the executive part of it lies. This holds in the body natural; for wherever we place the beginning of motion, whether from the head, or the heart, or the animal spirits in general, the body moves and acts by a consent of all its parts." The first sentence of this passage contains one of the most hackneyed maxims of the writers on politics; a maxim, however, of which it will be more difficult than is commonly imagined to discover, I say, not the justness, but the sense. The illustration from the natural body, contained in the second sentence, is indeed more glaringly nonsensical. What it is that constitutes this consent of all the parts of the body, which must be obtained previous

*For the farther elucidation of this point, see the analysis of persuasion given in book i., chap. vii., sect. iv.

† Disc. of the Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Rome, first ser tence

ly to every motion, is, I will take upon me to affirm, utterly inconceivable. Yet the whole of the paragraph from which this quotation is taken hath such a speciousness in it, that it is a hundred to one even a judicious reader will not, on the first perusal, be sensible of the defect.

4. THE MARVELLOUS.

The last species of nonsense to be exemplified I shall denominate the marvellous. It is the characteristic of this kind that it astonishes and even confounds by the boldness of the affirmations, which always appear flatly to contradict the plainest dictates of common sense, and thus to involve a manifest absurdity. I know no sort of authors that so frequently abound in this manner as some artists who have attempted to philosophize on the principles of their art. I shall give an example from the English translation of a French book,* as there is no example which I can remember at present in any book written originally in our own language: "Nature," says this writer, "in herself is unseemly, and he who copies her servilely, and without artifice, will always produce something poor, and of a mean taste. What is called load in colours and lights can only proceed from a profound knowledge in the values of colours, and from an admirable industry, which makes the painted objects appear more true, if I may say so, than the real ones. In this sense it may be asserted, that in Rubens's pieces Art is above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." What a strange subversion, or inversion, if you will, of all the most obvious, and hitherto undisputed truths. Not satisfied with affirming the unseemliness of every production of Nature, whom this philosopher hath discovered to be an arrant bungler, and the immense superiority of human Art, whose humble scholar dame Nature might be proud to be accounted, he riseth to asseverations which shock all our notions, and utterly defy the powers of apprehension. Painting is found to be the original; or, rather, Rubens's pictures are the original and Nature is the copy; and, indeed, very consequentially, the former is represented as the standard by which the beauty and perfections of the latter are to be estimated. Nor do the qualifying phrases, if I may say so, and in this sense it may be asserted, make here the smallest odds. For as this sublime critic has nowhere hinted what sense it is which he denominates this sense, so I believe no reader will be able to conjecture what the author might have said, and not absurdly said, to the same effect. The misfortune is, that when the expression is stripped of the absurd meaning,† there remains

* De Piles's Principles of Painting.

+ For the propriety and impor of this expression, see ch. vii

c. ii.

nothing but balderdash,* an unmeaning jumble of words which at first seem to announce some great discovery.† Specimens of the same kind are sometimes also to be met with in the poets. Witness the famous protestation of an heroic lover in one of Dryden's plays :

"My wound is great, because it is so small."

The nonsense of which was properly exposed by an extemporary verse of the Duke of Buckingham, who, on hearing this line, exclaimed in the house,

"It would be greater were it none at all."

Hyperbolé, carried to extravagance, is much of a piece, and never fails to excite disgust, if not laughter, instead of admi ration. Of this the famous laureat just now quoted, though indeed a very considerable genius, affords, among many other striking instances, that which follows:

"That star, that at your birth shone out so bright,

It stain'd the duller sun's meridian light."

Such vile fustian ought to be carefully avoided by every wri

ter.

Thus I have illustrated, as far as examples can illustrate, some of the principal varieties to be remarked in unmeaning sentences or nonsense-the puerile, the learned, the profound, and the marvellous; together with those other classes of the unintelligible, arising either from confusion of thought, accompanied with intricacy of expression, or from an exces sive aim at excellence in the style and manner.

So much for the explication of the first rhetorical quality of style, perspicuity, with the three ways of expressing one's self by which it may be injured-the obscure, the double meaning, and the unintelligible.

The latter part of the sentence was thus expressed in the first edition, "A jumble of bold words without meaning." To this phraseology exception was taken, which, though not entirely just, appears to have arisen from some obscurity, perhaps ambiguity, in the expression. This, I hope, is removed by the alteration now made.

† Since writing the above observations, I have seen De Piles's original performance, and find that his translator hath, in this place at least, done him no injustice. The whole passage in the French is as follows: "La Nature est ingrate d'elle-même, et qui s'attacheroit à la copier simplement comme elle est et sans artifice, feroit toujours quelque chose de pauvre et d'un très petit goût. Ce que vous nommez exagerations dans les couleurs, ct dans les lumieres, est une admirable industrie qui fait paroître les objets peints plus véritables, s'il faut ainsi dire, que les véritables mêmes. C'est ainsi que les tableaux de Rubens sont plus beaux que la Nature, laquelle semble n'etre que la copie des ouvrages de ce grand homme."-Recueil de divers Ouvrages sur la Peinture et le Coloris, par M. de Piles, Paris, 1755, p. 225. This is rather worse than the English. The qualifying phrase in the last sentence, we find, is the translator's, who seems, out of sheer modesty, to have brought it to cover nudities. His intention was good, but this is such a rag as cannot answer. Dryden on the Restoration

A A

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT I CAUSE THAT NONSENSE SO OFTEN ESCAPES BEING DETECTE BOTH BY THE WRITER AND BY THE READER?

SECTION I.

THE NATURE AND POWER OF SIGNS, BOTH IN SPEAKING AND IN THINK ING.

BEFORE quitting the subject of perspicuity, it will not be amiss to inquire into the cause of this strange phenomenon ; that even a man of discernment should write without meaning, and not be sensible that he hath no meaning; and that judicious people should read what hath been written in this way, and not discover the defect. Both are surprising, but the first much more than the last. A certain remissness will at times seize the most attentive reader, whereas an author of discernment is supposed to have carefully digested all that he writes. It is reported of Lopez de Vega, a famous Spanish poet, that the Bishop of Beller, being in Spain, asked him to explain one of his sonnets, which he said he had often read, but never understood. Lopez took up the sonnet, and after reading it several times, frankly acknowledged that he did not understand it himself; a discovery which the poet probably never made before.

But though the general fact hath frequently been observed, I do not find that any attempt hath been yet made to account for it. Berkeley, indeed, in his Principles of Human Knowledge, hath suggested a theory concerning language, though not with this view, which, if well founded, will go far to remove the principal difficulty: "It is a received opinion," says that author," that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea. This being so, and it being withal certain that names, which yet are not thought altogether insignificant, do not always mark out particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway concluded that they stand for abstract notions. That there are many names in use among speculative men which do not always suggest to others determinate particular ideas, is what nobody will deny. And a little attention will discover, that it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings) significant names which stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for. In reading and discoursing, names being for the most part used as letters are in algebra, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity