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vourite standards of excellence. In a copy which he presented of this together with several of his minor pieces in prose and verse to the Bodleian Library, where the volume still remains, he with his own hand entitled it "AREOPAGITICA, sive de Libertate Typographia Oratio." He revived this title for his written Speech, that it might carry on its exteriour a conspicuous token of its lineage. It was to announce technically the specific style of Athenian Oratoury which he now imitated, or rather emulated; and who will controvert his success in this deliberative species of Elocution, as distinguished from those harangues which were entirely for popular effect? or who will deny, that he has borne himself with the mien of a Pleader before the Judges of Areopagus?

"Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora gerebat."

Few, I conceive, will refuse this performance the praise of a strong adumbration of the senatorial diction at Athens. If my situation as its Editor have not warped my judgment, this composition is by no means inferior to its immediate copy, in force and perspicuity; neither can I perceive in Isocrates the same

warmth and vigour of Thought, which pervades and animates the English Oration. "Cela ne s'apelle pas imiter, c'est jouter "contre son Original* ;" as Gray in the Bard, and Campbell in Lochiel's Warning, with Horace's Prophecy of Nereus. To say nothing of the important matter it contains, we shall unquestionably risk little chance of contradiction if we aver, that he has transfused into his native idiom the dignified forms and phraseology of Attic Oratoury, and has given us the most authentic and happy exemplar of its grave energy that our own or any modern language has to boast.

These strictures will serve to place in a primary and unobserved point of view one among his inducements for writing this Isocratic" Discourse." When enumerating the labours for which he intermitted more congenial and pleasing studies; labours to which he had tasked himself in the service of Truth and Liberty; he states, that he had it in contemplation to exhibit in an English dress a true specimen of the Areopagitic style.. "Postremò de Typographiâ liberandâ, ne "veri et falsi arbitrium, quid edendum,

* Boileau.

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quid premendum, penès paucos esset, eósque "ferè indoctos, et vulgaris judicii homines, "librorum inspectioni præpositos, per quos "nemini ferè quicquam quod supra vulgus

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sapiat, in lucem emittere, aut licet aut “libet, ad justæ orationis modum Areopagiticam scripsi." (Pr. W. II. 333, ed. 1738.) — For purposes not dissimilar, the admirable Sir William Jones sketched after one of Plato's Dialogues the outline for his own celebrated and prosecuted Dialogue, an analysis of the eternal principles of free Government, accommodated to unlettered minds by simple and familiar illustrations.

It might perhaps be received as a fundamental axiom in this science, that no wellpolicied State can tolerate the confusion of the legislative with the judicial or executive functions. With our illustrious line of countrymen, to whose Wisdom, Firmness, and Virtue we are indebted for the Liberties of England, the praise lies of being the first who held out to other Nations the pattern of a political organization, which for the most part kept these authorities asunder, and which they distributed and adjusted so happily in a Constitution of three Estates, as to

render them wholesome restraints to moderate or over-rule the exorbitancies of each other. The accumulation of various and discordant Powers in the same Body, as well as the right of the Citizens to exercise a legislative voice personally in public assemblies, instead of delegating their power to a selected part in a full and free Representative, properly so called, were among the capital errors which destroyed the Republics of ancient times.

For,

In this respect, the policy of the great Athenian Law-giver was radically vitious, when he re-established, if he did not erect, the national Council of Areopagus. while in its ordinary course of procedure partaking more, I apprehend, of a judicial than of any other denomination of magistracy, the Areopagita seem to have been also the depositaries of a transcendental jurisdiction over the highest departments of State. There appears to have been lodged with them a plenitude of authority extending so far that it must have bordered on absolute Power, if it had not been liable to be instantly countervailed by the Decrees of the Citizens; but whose active and direct interposition in

their aggregate capacity was uncertain in the issue, and sometimes hazardous. In addition to the management of the public Treasure, to the charge of the established Religion, to their juridical and censorial Duties, and to their Prerogative of pardoning Offences, and dispensing Honours and Rewards, it should seem as if the Council of Areopagus had been entrusted with a Dominium eminens over the integral parts which constituted Solon's Polity. The antient Expositor whom H. Stephens cites is expressly of this opinion in the extract I have given from one of his Diatribes on Isocrates, in a preliminary Note on the meaning which MILTON annexed to AREOPAGITICA.

But the

effort of this Rhetor to "persuade the Par"lament of Athens to change the form of "Democratie" is in itself convincing evidence, that an eminent dominion, a sort of visitorial power, in this particular was committed to their care. We need not look

further. An Athenian Citizen, we may be reasonably assured, would have directed his "Discourse" on the expediency of a renovated order of things in their Commonwealth to the Men of Athens, and not to these

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