It is, indeed, more difficult to distinguish sentences of this kind from those of the second class of the unintelligible already discussed, in which the darkness is chiefly imputable to an affectation of excellence. But in these matters it is not of importance to fix the boundaries with precision. Sometimes pompous metaphors and sonorous phrases are injudiciously employed to add a dignity to the most trivial conceptions; sometimes they are made to serve as a vehicle for nonsense; and whether some of the above citations fall under the one denomination or the other would scarcely be worth while to inquire. It hath been observed, that in madmen there is as great a variety of character as in those who enjoy the use of their reason. In like manner, it may be said of nonsense, that, in writing it, there is as great scope for variety of style as there is in writing sense. I shall, therefore, not attempt to give specimens of all the characters of style which this kind of composition admits. The task would be endless. Let it suffice to specify some of the principal.

1. THE PUERILE.

The first I shall mention is the puerile, which is always produced when an author runs on in a specious verbosity, amusing his readers with synonymous terms and identical propositions, well-turned periods, and high-sounding words; but, at the same time, using those words so indefinitely, that the latter can either affix no meaning to them at all, or may almost affix any meaning to them he pleases. "If 'tis asked," says a late writer," whence arises this harmony or beauty of language? what are the rules for obtaining it? the answer is obvious: Whatever renders a period sweet and pleasant makes it also graceful; a good ear is the gift of Nature; it may be much improved, but not acquired by art; whoever is possessed of it will scarcely need dry critical precepts to enable him to judge of a true rhythmus and melody of composition; just numbers, accurate proportions, a musical symphony, magnificent figures, and that decorum which is the result of all these, are unison to the human mind; we are so framed by Nature that their charm is irresistible. Hence all ages and nations have been smit with the love of the Muses."* Who can now be at a loss to know whence the harmony and beauty of language arises, or what the rules for obtaining it are? Through the whole paragraph the author proceeds in the same careless and desultory manner, not much unlike that of the tritical essay upon the faculties of the mind; affording at times some glimmerings of sense, and perpetually si solvantur, segregentur, et denudentur, ad nihilum fere recasura forent." As to the causes of the deception there is in this manner of writing, I shall attempt the investigation of them in the following chapter.

* Geddes on the Composition of the Ancients, sect. i.

ringing the changes on a few favourite words and phrases. A poetical example of the same signature, in which there is not even a glimpse of meaning, we have in the following lines of Dryden :

"From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony,

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man."*

In general it may be said, that in writings of this stamp we must accept of sound instead of sense, being assured, at least, that if we meet with little that can inform the judgment, we shall find nothing that will offend the ear

2. THE LEARNED.

Another sort I shall here specify is the learned nonsense. I know not a more fruitful source of this species than scholastic theology. The more incomprehensible the subject is, the greater scope has the declaimer to talk plausibly without any meaning. A specimen of this I shall give from an author who should have escaped this animadversion, had he not introduced from the pulpit a jargon whieh (if we can say without impropriety that it was fit for anything) was surely fitter for a cloister; for what cannot in the least contribute to the instruction of a Christian society, may afford excellent matter of contemplative amazement to dronish monks. "Although we read of several properties attributed to God in Scripture, as wisdom, goodness, justice, &c., we must not apprehend them to be several powers, habits, or qualities, as they are in us; for as they are in God, they are neither distinguished from one another, nor from his nature or essence in whom they are said to be. In whom, I say, they are said to be; for, to speak properly, they are not in him, but are his very essence or nature itself; which, acting severally upon several objects, seem to us to act from several properties or perfections in him; whereas, all the difference is only in our different apprehensions of the same thing. God in himself is a most simple and pure act, and therefore cannot have anything in him but what is that most simple and pure act itself; which, seeing it bringeth upon every creature what it deserves, we conceive of it as of several divine perfections in the same almighty Being; whereas God, whose understanding is infinite as himself, doth not apprehend himself under the distinct notions of wisdom, or goodness, or justice, or the like, but only as Jehovah." How edifying must it have been to the hearers to be made acquainted with these deep discoveries of the men of science divine attributes, which are no attributes, which are totally distinct and perfectly the same; which are justly as* Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687. Beveridge's Sermons

cribed to God, being ascribed to him in Scripture, but do not belong to him; which are something and nothing, which are the figments of human imagination, mere chimeras, which are God himself, which are the actors of all things; and which, to sum up all, are themselves a simple act! "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”* Can the tendency of such teaching be any other than to perplex and to confound, and even to throw the hearers into universal doubt and skepticism? To such a style of explication these lines of our British bard, addressed to the patroness of Sophistry as well as Dulness, are admirably adapted: "Explain upon a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it."† Of the same kind of school-metaphysics are these lines of Cowley;

66

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last."‡

What an insatiable appetite has this bastard-philosophy for
absurdity and contradiction! A now that lasts; that is, an
instant which continues during successive instants; an eter-
nal now, an instant that is no instant, and an eternity that is
no eternity. I have heard of a preacher who, desirous to ap-
pear very profound, and to make observations on the com-
monest subjects, which had never occurred to anybody before,
remarked, as an instance of the goodness of Providence, that
the moments of time come successively, and not simultane-
ously or together, which last method of coming would, he
said, occasion infinite confusion in the world. Many of his
audience concluded his remark to be no better than
bull;
and yet it is fairly defensible on the principles of the school-
men, if that can be called principles which consists merely
in words. According to them, what Pope says hyperbolical-
ly of the transient duration and narrow range of man, is a
literal description of the eternity and immensity of God:
"His time a moment, and a point his space."{

I remember to have seen it somewhere remarked, that mankind being necessarily incapable of making a present of anything to God, have conceived, as a succedaneous expedient, the notion of destroying what should be offered to him, or, at least, of rendering it unfit for any purpose. Something similar appears to have taken place in regard to the explanation of the Divine nature and attributes attempted by some theorists. On a subject so transcendent, if it be impossible to be sublime, it is easy to be unintelligible. And that the theme is naturally incomprehensible, they seem to have considered as a full apology for them in being perfectly absurd. + Dunciad. Essay on Man, Ep. i.

* Job. xxxviii., 2. Davideis, book i.

In the former case, what people could not in strictness bestow 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.

Rea

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. son 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 shall 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 arrogance 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 political 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 sentence