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From Blois he returned to Paris; and having now mastered the French language, found great pleasure in the society of French philosophers and poets. He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly interesting conversations, one with Malbranche, the other with Boileau. Malbranche expressed great partiality for the English, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was indeed so unjust as to call the author of the Leviathan a poor silly creature. Addison's modesty restrained him from fully relating, in his letter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to Court or to the Academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English and of English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see no ground for such a supposition. English literature was to the French of the age of Louis the Fourteenth what German literature was to our own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the Paradise Lost, and about Absalom and Achitophel; but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the English. Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere. "Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin; and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation." Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the Fourteenth firmly, and even rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was there in Addison's position that could induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the first and last time? Nor was Boileau's contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would ever be written in a dead language. And did he think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his opinion? Boileau also thought it probable, that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can think otherwise? What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than Frederic the Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during more than half a century, after unlearning his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly during many years with French associates, could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, the last of Dr. Robertson's works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, because we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good modern Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says, "Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par l
There are at least two distinct clefts on the floor, one running from the W. wall towards the centre, and another on the S.E. side of the interior. The last throws out two branches towards the S.W. ROSSE. A fine bright deep crater in the Mare Nectaris, N. of the pointed termination of the W. wall of Fracastorius, with which it is connected by a bold curved ridge, with a crater upon it.
When I first gave my mind to vivisections, as a means of discovering the motions and uses of the heart, and sought to discover these from actual inspection, and not from the writings of others, I found the task so truly arduous, so full of difficulties, that I was almost tempted to think, with Fracastorius, that the motion of the heart was only to be comprehended by God.
PICCOLOMINI. A ring-plain of a very massive type, about 57 miles in diameter, S. of Fracastorius, with complex and prominently terraced walls, surmounted by very many peaks; one of which on the E. attains a height of 14,000 feet, and another, N. of it, on the same side, an altitude of 15,000 feet above the interior.
The floor of Fracastorius is, as regards the light streaks and other features upon it, only second in interest to those of Plato and Archimedes, and will repay systematic observation. Between thirty and forty light spots and craters have been recorded on its surface, most of them, as in these formations, being situated either on or at the edges of the light streaks.
Hieronymus Fracastorius, in his treatise "On Sympathy and Antipathy," thus states the fact and the philosophy, and who shall dare gainsay the conclusions of one so learned in science, medicine, and astrology as this distinguished man? "We read," he says, "that there were certain families in Crete who fascinated by praising, and this is doubtless quite possible.
Letronne is a half-submerged ring, at the southern end of the Oceanus Procellarum, which recalls Fracastorius in the western lunar hemisphere. It lies, however, ten degrees nearer the equator than Fracastorius. Billy is a mountain ring whose interior seems to have been submerged by the dark substance of the Oceanus Procellarum, although its walls have remained intact.
Not water, but perhaps a sea of lava which has now solidified and forms the floor of the Mare Nectaris. The name of this singular formation is Fracastorius. Elger has an interesting remark about it.
5 Moreouer, Aluaros Nunnius a Spaniard, and learned Cosmographer, and Iacobus Cartier, who made two voyages into those parts, and sayled 900 miles upon the Northeast coastes of America doe in part confirme the same. 6 Likewise Hieronymus Fracastorius, a learned Italian, and trauailer in the North parts of the same land.
He undertook first the movements of the heart, a task so truly arduous and so full of difficulties that he was almost tempted to think with Fracastorius that "the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God."
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