is commonly sought from fermented, perhaps from distilled, liquors, which render many lives wretched, that would otherwise have been only ridiculous. The tender nerves and low spirits of such poor creatures would be much relieved by the use of tar-water, which might prolong and cheer their lives. I do, therefore, recommend to them the use of a cordial, not only safe and innocent, but giving health and spirit as surely as other cordials destroy them."

"Studious persons, also, pent up in narrow holes, breathing bad air, and stooping over their books, are much to be pitied. As they are debarred the free use of air and exercise, this I will venture to recommend as the best succedaneum to both. Though it were to be wished, that modern scholars would, like the ancients, meditate and converse more in walks and gardens, and open air, which, upon the whole, would, perhaps, be no hinderance to their learning, and a great advantage to their health. My own sedentary course of life had long since thrown me into an ill habit, attended with many ailments, particularly a nervous cholic, which rendered my life a burthen, and the more so, because my pains were exasperated by exercise. But since the use of tar-water, I find, though not a perfect recovery from my old and rooted illness, yet such a gradual return of health and ease, that I esteem my taking of this medicine the greatest of all temporal blessings, and am convinced that, under Providence, I owe my life to it."

Will it not seem incredible, that the learned Bishop contrives, and by no very abrupt or unpleasing transitions, but by easy and gradual steps, to introduce into his Essay on TarWater, the Newtonian philosophy of light and attraction; the metaphysics of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; the forms of the Peripatetics; the Aristotelian and Platonic doctrines of the non-existence of corporeal things (the germ of his own theory); the Egyptian Isis and Osiris; the Socratic doctrine opposed to the mechanical or material system; the Trinity of Plato, compared with that of Revelation; and a variety of sound and recondite erudition upon other topics? Having dwelt upon the doctrine of salts, acids, and alkalis, he contemplates air as the common seminary of all vivifying principles. Adopting the ancient hypothesis, he considers it to be a mass of various particles, abraded and sublimated from wet and dry bodies, cohering with particles of æther, the whole permeated by pure æther, or light, or fire, words which the old philosophy used promiscuously. This æther, or pure invisible fire, the most subtle and elastic of all bodies, pervades and expands itself through the whole universe. It is the first natural spring, or mover, from which the air derives its power. Always restless and in motion, it actuates and enlivens the whole visible mass, produces and destroys, and keeps up the perpetual round of generations and corruptions. This æther, or fire, however, is an inferior instrumental cause to the Supreme mind that governs

the mundane system, or macrocosm, with unlimited power, as the human mind, with limited power, directs the microcosm. But, really speaking, no instrumental or mechanical cause can be said to act. Motion itself is only a passion; and the fiery substance is only a means, or instrument, not a real primary efficient. According to the Peripatetics, the fiery ætherial substance contains the form of all inferior beings, and its vital force is vital to all, but diversely received, according to the diversity of the subjects; as all colours are virtually contained in the light, but their distinctions of red, blue, &c. depend on the difference of the objects which it illustrates. The Platonists held, that the intellect resided in a soul, and the soul in an ætherial vehicle. Galen taught, that the soul had for its immediate tegument, or vehicle, a body of æther, or fire, by means of which it moves other bodies, and is, in its turn, affected by them. This interior clothing was supposed to remain upon the soul, not only after death, but after the most perfect purgation, which the Platonists held to be necessary for the cleansing of the soul.

Purumque reliquit

Ætherium sensum atque auræ simplicis ignem.

Accordingly, by the Eastern nations, as well as by the Greeks and Romans, the worship of Vesta, or fire, was retained; Vesta, according to Ovid, being fire.

Nec tu aliud Vestam, quam vivam intellige flammam.

The great principle of Berkeley's philosophy is strongly insisted on in several passages of this dissertation. Natural phænomena, he argues, cannot be accounted for without admitting the immediate presence and action of an incorporeal agent, who connects, moves, and disposes all things according to such rules, and for such purposes, as may seem good to him. All phænomena, to speak truly, are appearances in the soul or mind, and it never has been explained, upon mechanical principles, how external figures and bodies should produce an appearance in the mind. We subjoin an accurate summary of the Pythagorean and Platonic system, which Berkeley's extensive reading seems to have rendered quite familiar to him.

"The Pythagoreans and Platonists had a notion of the true system of the world. They allowed of mechanical principles, but actuated by soul or mind: they distinguished the primary qualities in bodies from the secondary, making the former to be physical causes, and they understood physical causes in a right sense: they saw the a mind, infinite in power, unextended, invisible, immortal, governed,

connected, and contained all things: they saw that there was no such thing as real absolute space: that mind, soul or spirit, truly and really exists that bodies only exist in a secondary and dependent sense: that the soul is the place of forms: that the sensible qualities are to be regarded as acts only in the cause, and as passions in us: they accurately considered the differences of intellect, rational soul, and sensitive soul, with their distinct acts of intellection, reasoning, and sensation, points wherein the Cartesians and their followers, who consider sensation as a mode of thinking, seem to have failed. They knew there was a subtle æther pervading the whole mass of corporeal beings, and which was itself actually moved and directed by a mind: and that physical causes were only instruments, or, rather, marks and signs.

"Those ancient philosophers understood the generation of animals to consist, in the unfolding and the distending of the minute imperceptible parts of pre-existing animalcules, which passeth for a modern discovery: this they took for the work of nature, but nature animate and intelligent: they understood that all things were alive and in motion: they supposed a concord and discord, union and disunion in particles, some attracting, others repelling each other: and that those attractions and repulsions, so various, regular, and useful, could not be accounted for, but by an intelligence presiding and directing all particular motions, for the conservation and benefit of the whole.

"The Egyptians, who impersonated nature, had made her a distinct principle, and even deified her under the name of Isis. But Osiris was understood to be mind or reason, chief and sovereign of all. Osiris, if we may believe Plutarch, was the first, pure, unmixed and holy principle, not discernible by the lower faculties; a glimpse whereof, like lightning darting forth, irradiates the understanding; with regard to which Plutarch adds, that Plato and Aristotle termed one part of philosophy irolixè; to wit, when having soared above common mixed objects, and got beyond the precincts of sense and opinion, they arrive to contemplate the first and most simple being, free from all matter and composition. This is that soia vtws oα of Plato, which employeth mind alone; which alone governs the world, and the soul is that which immediately informs and animates nature."

We have, however, been so liberal of quotation, that we must confine ourselves only to one additional extract; and we have selected it, because it indicates the sources whence the author derived his tenet of the non-existence of matter."

"Neither Plato nor Aristotle by matter, ^», understood corporeal substance, whatever the moderns may understand by that word. To them, certainly, it signified no positive actual being. Aristotle describes it as made up of negatives, having neither quantity nor quality, nor essence. And not only the Platonists and Pythagoreans, but also the Peripatetics themselves, declare it to be known, neither by sense, nor by any direct and just reasoning, but only by some spurious or adulterine method, as hath been observed before. Simon Portius, a famous Peripatetic of the sixteenth century, denies it to be any substance at

all, for, saith he, nequit per se subsistere, quia sequeretur, id quod non est in actu esse in actu. If Jamblichus may be credited, the Egyptians supposed matter so far from including ought of substance or essence, that, according to them, God produced it by separation from all substance, essence or being, åò ¿cióτnl@ åñoσxiodéions idéτnlo. That matter is actually nothing, but potentially all things, is the doctrine of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and all the ancient Peripatetics.

"According to those philosophers, matter is only a pura potentia, a mere possibility. But Anaximander, successor to Thales, is represented as having thought the supreme Deity to be infinite matter. Nevertheless, though Plutarch calleth it matter, yet it was simply rò πgov, which means no more than infinite or indefinite. And although the moderns teach, that space is real and infinitely extended; yet, if we consider that it is no intellectual notion, nor yet perceived by any of our senses, we shall, perhaps, be inclined to think with Plato, in his Timæus, that this also is the result of xoyiσμòs vól, or spurious reasoning, and a kind of waking dream. Plato observes, that we dream, as it were, when we think of place, and believe it necessary, that whatever exists should exist in some place. Which place, or space, he also observes, is μer' avadnoías àπlov, that it is to be felt as darkness is seen, or silence heard, being a mere privation.

"If any one should think to infer the reality, or actual being of matter, from the modern tenet, that gravity is always proportionable to the quantity of matter, let him but narrowly scan the modern demonstration of that tenet, and he will find it to be a vain circle, concluding, in truth, no more than this, that gravity is proportionable to weight, that is, to itself. Since matter is conceived only as defect and mere possibility; and, since God is absolute perfection and act; it follows, there is the greatest distance and opposition imaginable between God and matter; insomuch, that a material God would be altogether inconsistent.

"The force that produces, the intellect that orders, the goodness that perfects, all things, is the Supreme Being. Evil, defect, negation, is not the object of God's creative power. From motion, the Peripatetics trace out a first immoveable mover. The Platonics make God author of all good, author of no evil, and unchangeable. According to Anaxagoras, there was a confused mass of all things in one chaos, but mind supervening, irov, distinguished and divided them. Anaxagoras, it seems, ascribed the motive faculty to mind, which mind, some subsequent philosophers have accurately discriminated from soul and life, ascribing it to the sole faculty of intellection.

But, still, God was supposed the first agent, the source and original of all things, which he produceth, not occasionally or instrumentally, but with actual and real efficacy. Thus, the treatise, De secretiore parte divinæ sapientiæ secundum Egyptios, in the tenth book, saith of God, that he is not only the first agent, but also that he it is who truly acts, or creates, qui veré efficit."

We have thus endeavoured to convey a few intimations of the great mass of knowledge, and of the acuteness of reason

ing, which are to be found in Berkeley's Treatise on Tar-water. He was no slight admirer of the wisdom and literature of antiquity, and is understanding received a strong impulse from these habitual and beloved studies. Hence it was, that he adopted on several occasions the delightful form of dialoguewriting, particularly in his Minute Philosopher, a disquisition that well deserves to be reprinted. Probably the same examples invited him to his excursions from tar-water into the remote speculations of theology and metaphysics, for, with the ancient writers, disquisitions on physical science were frequently blended with the highest and most abstruse subjects of contemplation. His own apology is, that an Essay is not tied down to method and system. "It may, therefore,' he says, " be pardoned, if this rude Essay doth, by insensible transitions, draw the reader into remote inquiries and speculations, that were not thought of, either by him, or the author, at first setting out." But what critic can except to the diffusion of Berkeley's exuberant mind in a tract, which usuriously repays us for its laxity by such ample stores of learning and meditation, expressed in a style, easy, perspicuous, and elegant, and above all, truly English ;-or complain that its excellent author did not make it a barren dissertation upon the uninviting subject of Tar-water.

ART. IV.-A Short View of the Long Life of that ever-wise, valiaunt, and fortunat Commander Rice ap Thomas, Knight, Constable, and Lieutenant of Brecknock; Chamberlaine of Carmarthen, and Cardigan; Seneschall and Chauncellor of Haverfordwest, Rowse (Ross,) and Buelth; Justiciar of South Wales, and Governour of all Wales; Knight Bannerett and Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Garter, a Privie Councellor to Henrie VII. and a favourite to Henry VIII.

MS.

In one of our earlier numbers,* we intimated that it was our intention to notice works, which, from different causes, have never been printed, but are lying in public or private collections, unseen and unknown to any but the antiquarian scholar, or the enthusiastic Bibliomaniac. The title which we have prefixed to the present Article designates one of these neglected

* See No. VIII. in an article on "The Shah Námeh of Ferdusi," a Persian MS.