and ignorance in its author, at the time of writing and publishing it—this is not arrogance; although to a vast majority of the decent part of our countrymen it would be fuperfluous as a truism, if it were exclufively an author's business to convey or revive knowledge, and not sometimes his duty to awaken the indignation of his reader by the expreffion of his own.

A second species of this unamiable quality, which has been often distinguished by the name of Warburtonian arrogance, betrays itself, not as in the former, by proud or petulant omiffion of proof or argument, but by the habit of ascribing weakness of intellect, or want of taste and fenfibility, or hardness of heart, or corruption of moral principle, to all who deny the truth of the doctrine, or the fufficiency of the evidence, or the fairness of the reasoning adduced in its fupport. This is indeed. not effentially different from the first, but affumes a separate character from its accompaniments: for though both the doctrine and its proofs may have been legitimately supplied by the understanding, yet the bitterness of personal crimination will refolve itself into naked affertion. We are, therefore, authorized by experience, and justified on the principle of self-defence and by the law of fair retaliation, in attributing it to a vicious temper arrogant from irritability, or irritable from arrogance. This learned arrogance admits of many gradations, and is aggravated or palliated, accordingly as the point in difpute has been more or less

controverted, as the reasoning bears a smaller or greater proportion to the virulence of the perfonal detraction, and as the perfon or parties, who are the objects of it, are more or less respected, more or less worthy of respect.*

Lastly, it must be admitted as a just imputation of prefumption when an individual obtrudes on the public eye, with all the high pretenfions of originality, opinions and obfervations, in regard to which he must plead wilful ignorance in order to be acquitted of dishonest plagiarism. On the fame feat must the writer be placed, who in a difquifition on any important fubject proves, by falfehoods either of omiffion or of pofitive error, that he has neglected to poffefs himself, not only of the information requifite for this particular subject; but even of those acquirements, and that general knowledge, which could alone authorize him to commence a public inftructor. This is an office which

* Had the author of the Divine Legation of Mofes more fkilfully appropriated his coarfe eloquence of abuse, his cuftomary affurances of the idiotcy, both in head and heart, of all his opponents; if he had employed those vigorous arguments of his own vehement humour in the defence of truths acknowledged and reverenced by learned men in general; or if he had confined them to the names of Chubb, Woolfton, and other precurfors of Thomas Payne; we fhould perhaps ftill characterize his mode of controverfy by its rude violence, but not fo often have heard his name used, even by those who have never read his writings, as a proverbial expreffion for learned arrogance. But when a novel and doubtful hypothefis of his own formation was the citadel to be defended, and his mephitic hand-granados were thrown with the fury of lawless defpotifm at the fair

cannot be procured gratis. The industry, necefsary for the due exercise of its functions, is its purchase-money; and the absence or infufficiency of the fame is fo far a fpecies of dishonesty, and implies a prefumption in the literal as well as the ordinary sense of the word. He has taken a thing before he had acquired any right or title thereto.

If in addition to this unfitness which every man poffeffes the means of ascertaining, his aim should be to unfettle a general belief closely connected with public and private quiet; and if his language and manner be avowedly calculated for the illiterate, and perhaps licentious, part of his countrymen; disgusting as his presumption must appear, it is yet loft or evanefcent in the close neighbourhood of his guilt. That Hobbes tranflated Homer into English verfe and published his tranflation, furnishes no pofitive evidence of his felf-conceit, though it implies a great lack of self-knowledge

reputation of a Sykes and a Lardner, we not only confirm the verdict of his independent contemporaries, but cease to wonder, that arrogance fhould render men objects of contempt in many, and of averfion in all, inftances, when it was capable of hurrying a Chriftian teacher of equal talents and learning into a flanderous vulgarity, which efcapes our difguft only when we fee the writer's own reputation the fole victim. But throughout his great work, and the pamphlets in which he fupported it, he always feems to write as if he had deemed it a duty of decorum to publish his fancies on the Mofaic Law as the Law itfelf was delivered, that is, in thunders and lightnings: or as if he had applied to his own book instead of the facred mount, the menace There fhall not a hand touch it but he shall furely be ftoned or fhot through.

and of acquaintance with the nature of poetry.* A ftrong wifh often imposes itself on the mind for an actual power: the mistake is favoured by the innocent pleasure derived from the exercise of verfification, perhaps by the approbation of intimates; and the candidate asks from more impartial readers that fentence, which nature has not enabled him to anticipate. But when the philosopher of Malmesbury waged war with Wallis and the fundamental truths of pure geometry, every inftance of his gross ignorance and utter misconception of the very elements of the science he propofed to confute, furnished an unanswerable fact in proof of his high prefumption; and the confident and insulting language of the attack leaves the judicious reader in as little doubt of his gross arrogance. An illiterate mechanic, who mistaking some disturbance of his nerves for a miraculous call proceeds alone to convert a tribe of savages, whofe language he can have no natural means of acquiring, may have been misled by impulses very different from those of high self-opinion; but the illiterate perpetrator of the 'Age of Reason' must have had his very confcience ftupified by the habitual intoxication of prefumptuous

* At the time I wrote this effay, and indeed till the prefent month, December, 1818, I had never feen Hobbes' translation of the Odyffey, which, I now find, is by no means to be spoken of contemptuously. It is doubtless as much too ballad-like, as the later verfions are too epic; but still, on the whole, it leaves a much truer impreffion of the original.

arrogance, and his common-sense over-clouded by the vapours from his heart.

As long therefore as I obtrude no unfupported affertions on my readers; and as long as I ftate my opinions and the evidence which induced or compelled me to adopt them, with calmnefs and that diffidence in myself, which is by no means incompatible with a firm belief in the juftness of the opinions themselves; while I attack no man's private life from any cause, and detract from no man's honours in his public character, from the truth of his doctrines, or the merits of his compofitions, without detailing all my reasons and resting the result folely on the arguments adduced; while I moreover explain fully the motives of duty, which influenced me in resolving to inftitute such investigation; while I confine all afperity of cenfure, and all expreffions of contempt, to grofs violations of truth, honour, and decency, to the base corrupter and the detected flanderer while I write on no subject, which I have not studied with my beft attention, on no fubject which my education and acquirements have incapacitated me from properly understanding; and above all while I approve myself, alike in praife and in blame, in close reasoning and in impaffioned declamation, a steady friend to the two best and surest friends of all men, truth and honesty; I will not fear an accufation of either presumption or arrogance from the good and the wife, I fhall pity it from the weak, and welcome it from the wicked.

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