than any entrusted to the great Officers of State) this may be obviated, by fwearing thofe Six Perfons of his Majesty's Privy Council, and obliging them to pafs every thing of moment previously at that most honourable Board.

A

MONG all the enquiries which have been pursued

by the curious and inquifitive, there is none more worthy the fearch of a learned head, than the fource from whence we derive thofe arts and sciences, which raise us fo far above the vulgar, the countries in which they rose, and the channels by which they have been conveyed. As thofe who firft brought them amongst us attained them by travelling into the remotest parts of the earth, I may boast of some advantages by the fame means, fince I write this from the deferts of Ethiopia, from those plains of fand, which have buried the pride of invading armies, with

my

my foot perhaps at this inftant ten fathom over the grave of Cambyfes; a folitude to which neither Pythagoras nor Appollonius ever penetrated.

It is univerfally agreed that arts and sciences were derived to us from the Egyptians and Indians; but from whom they firft received them is yet a fecret. The highest period of time to which the learned attempt to trace them, is the beginning of the Affyrian monarchy, when their inventors were worfhipped as gods. It is therefore neceffary to go backward into times even more remote, and to gain fome knowledge of their hiftory, from whatever dark and broken hints may any way be found in ancient authors concerning them.

Nor Troy nor Thebes were the first empires; we have mention, though not histories, of an earlier warlike people called the Pygmæans. I cannot but perfuade myself, from those accounts in Homer, Aristotle, and others, of their History, Wars, and Revolutions, and from the very air in which thofe authors fpeak of them as of things known, that they were then a part of the study of the learned. And though all we directly hear is of their military atchievements in the brave defence of their country, from the annual invafions of a powerful enemy; yet I cannot doubt but that they excelled as much in the arts of peaceful government, though there remain no traces of their civil inftitutions, Empires as great have been swal

lowed

P Il. iii. Hom.

lowed up in the wreck of time; and fuch fudden periods have been put to them as occafion a total ignorance of their story. And if I should conjecture that the like happened to this nation from a general extirpation of the people by those flocks of monftrous birds, wherewith antiquity agrees they were continually infested, it ought not to seem more incredible than that once the Baleares was wafted by rabbits, q Smynthe by mice, and of late Bermudas almost depopulated by rats. Nothing is more natural to imagine, than that the few furvivors of that empire retired into the depths of their deserts, where they lived undisturbed, till they were found out by Ofiris, in his travels to inftruct mankind.

"He met," fays Diodorus, "in Æthiopia, a fort "of little Satyrs, who were hairy one half of their "body, and whose leader, Pan, accompanied him in "his expedition for the civilizing of mankind." Now of this great perfonage Pan we have a very particular description in the ancient writers, who una. nimously agree to represent him shaggy-bearded, hairy all over, half a man and half a beast, and walking erect with a staff, (the posture in which his race do to this day appear among us); and fince the chief thing to which he applied himself was the civilizing of mankind, it should seem that the first principle of science must be received from that nation to which the gods

were

a Euftat. in Hom. Iliad i.

r

Speed. in Bermudas.

s Diod. 1. i. c. 18.

were by Homer faid to refort twelve days every year for the conversation of its wife and just inhabitants.

If from Ægypt we proceed to take a view of India, we shall find that their knowledge alfo derived itself from the fame fource. To that country did these noble creatures accompany Bacchus, in his expedition under the conduct of Silenus, who is also described to us with the fame marks and qualifications. "Mankind "is ignorant," faith Diodorus', "whence Silenus "derived his birth through his great antiquity; but "he had a tail on his loins, as likewife had all his pro"geny in fign of their defcent." Here then they fettled a colony, which to this day fubfifts with the fame tails. From this time they seem to have communicated themselves only to those men, who retired from the converse of their own fpecies to a more uninterrupted life of contemplation. I am much inclined to believe, that in the midst of those folitudes they instituted the fo much celebrated order of Gymnofophifts. For whoever obferves the scene and manner of their life, will easily find them to have imitated, with all exactness imaginable, the manners and customs of their masters and inftructors. They are faid to dwell in the thickest woods, to go naked, to suffer their bodies to be over-run with hair, and their nails to grow to a prodigious length. "Plutarch fays, they eat what "they could get in the fields, their drink was water, "and

Diod. I. iii. c. 69. Fortune.

" Plutarch in his Orat. on Alexander's