causes of those actions which he describes; for from the first of these the latter follows of direct consequence. And for this reason he professes an immortal enmity to those tricks and jugglings which the common people believe as real miracles, because they are ignorant of the causes which produced them. But he had made a diligent search into them, and found out that they proceeded either from the fond credulity of the people, or were imposed on them by the craft of those whose interest it was that they should be believed. You hear not in Polybius, that it rained blood or stones; that a bull had spoken; or a thousand such impossibilities, with which Livy perpetually crowds the calends of almost every consulship. His new years could no more begin without them, during his description of the Punick wars, than our prognosticating almanacks without the effects of the present oppositions betwixt Saturn and Jupiter, the foretelling of comets and coruscations in the air; which seldom happen at the times assigned by our astrologers, and almost always fail in their events. If If you will give credit to some other authors, some god was always present with Hannibal or Scipio, to direct their actions; that a visible deity wrought journey-work under Hannibal, to conduct him through the difficult passages of the Alps; and another did the same office of drudgery for Scipio when he besieged New Carthage, by draining the water, which otherwise would have drowned his army in their

rash approaches: which Polybius observing, says wittily and truly, that the authors of such fabulous kind of stuff write tragedies, not histories. For, as the poets, when they are at a loss for the solution of a plot, bungle up their catastrophe with a god descending in a machine, so these inconsiderate historians, when they have brought their heroes into a plunge by some rash and headlong undertaking, having no human way remaining to disengage them with their honour, are forced to have recourse to miracle; and introduce a god for their deliverance. It is a common frenzy of the ignorant multitude, says Casaubon, to be always engaging heaven on their side; and indeed it is a successful stratagem of any General to gain authority among his soldiers, if he can persuade them that he is the man by fate appointed for such or such an action, though most impracticable. To be favoured of GOD, and command (if it may be permitted so to say) the extraordinary concourse of Providence, sets off a hero, and makes more specious the cause for which he fights, without any consideration of morality, which ought to be the beginning and end of all our actions: for where that is violated, GOD is only present in permission; and suffers a wrong to be done, but not commands it. Light historians, and such as are superstitious in their natures, by the artifice of feigned miracles captivate the gross understandings of their readers, and please their fancies by relations of things which are rather wonderful than

true; but such as are of a more profound and solid judgment, (which is the character of our Polybius,) have recourse only to their own natural lights, and by them pursue the methods at least of probability, if they cannot arrive to a settled certainty. He was satisfied that Hannibal was not the first who had made a passage through the Alps, but that the Gauls had been before him in their descent on Italy; and also knew that this most prudent General, when he laid his design of invading that country, had made an alliance with the Gauls, and prepossessed them in his favour; and before he stirred a foot from Spain, had provided against all those difficulties which he foresaw in his attempt, and compassed his undertaking, which indeed was void of miracles, but full of conduct, and military experience. In the same manner, Scipio, before he departed from Rome, to take his voyage into Spain, had carefully considered every particular circumstance which might cross his and made his enterprize as easy purpose, to him as human prudence could provide; so that he was victorious over that nation, not by virtue of any miracle, but by his admirable forecast, and wise conduct in the execution of his design. Of which though Polybius was not an eye-witness, he yet had it from the best testimony, which was that of Lælius, the friend of Scipio, who accompanied him in that expedition; of whom our author with great diligence enquired concerning every thing of moment which happened in that war,

and whom he commends for his sincerity in that relation.

Whensoever he gives us the account of any considerable action, he never fails to tell us why it succeeded, or for what reason it miscarried; together with all the antecedent causes of its undertaking, and the manner of its performance; all which he accurately explains: of which I will select but some few instances, because I want leisure to expatiate on many. In the fragments of the seventeenth book he makes a learned dissertation concerning the Macedonian phalanx, or gross body of foot, which was formerly believed to be invincible, till experience taught the contrary by the success of the battle which Philip lost to the commonwealth of Rome; and the manifest and most certain causes are therein related, which prove it to be inferior to the Roman legions. When also he had told us in his former books, of the three great battles wherein Hannibal had overthrown the Romans, and the last at Cannæ, wherein he had in a manner conquered that republick, he gives the reasons of every defeat, either from the choice of ground, or the strength of the foreign horse in Hannibal's army, or the ill-timing of the fight on the vanquished side. After this, when he describes the turn of fortune on the part of the Romans, you are visibly conducted upwards to the causes of that change, and the reasonableness of the method which was afterwards pursued by that commonwealth, which raised it to the empire of the world. In these and many

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other examples, which for brevity are omitted, there is nothing more plain than that Polybius denies all power to fortune, and places the sum of success in providence: συμβαίνον]ων τύχην αιτιᾶσθε Qaλov, indeed, are his words. It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence. So that whenever our author seems to attribute any thing to chance, he speaks only with the vulgar, and desires so to be understood.

But here I must make bold to part company with Casaubon for a moment. He is a vehement friend to any author with whom he has taken any pains; and his partiality to Persius, in opposition to Juvenal, is too fresh in my memory to be forgotten. Because Polybius will allow nothing to the power of chance, he takes an occasion to infer, that he believed a Providence; sharply inveighing against those who have accused him of atheism. He makes Suidas his second in this quarrel; and produces his single evidence, and that but a bare assertion neither,' without proof, that

Our author's attachment to English idiom is observable in all his writings, but perhaps he has sometimes carried it too far; and as he says elsewhere, (see vol. ii. p. 49.) one may be here tempted to ask, "is this idiom, or false grammar and nonsense, couched under the specious name of Anglicism?" It is strange that neither should represent too; and yet what other signification has the word here? We have again the same phraseology in his