reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just
occasion for them. One might produce an example of it in the behaviour
of one in whom it appeared in all its majesty, and one whose silence, as
well as his person, was altogether divine. When one considers this
subject only in its sublimity, this great instance could not but occur
to me; and since I only make use of it to show the highest example of
it, I hope I do not offend in it. To forbear replying to an unjust
reproach, and overlook it with a generous, or (if possible) with an
entire neglect of it, is one of the most heroic acts of a great mind.
And I must confess, when I reflect upon the behaviour of some of the
greatest men in antiquity, I do not so much admire them that they
deserved the praise of the whole age they lived in, as because they
contemned the envy and detraction of it.

All that is incumbent on a man of worth, who suffers under so ill a
treatment, is to lie by for some time in silence and obscurity, till the
prejudice of the times be over, and his reputation cleared. I have often
read with a great deal of pleasure a legacy of the famous Lord Bacon,
one of the greatest geniuses that our own or any country has produced:
after having bequeathed his soul, body, and estate, in the usual form,
he adds, "My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to my
countrymen, after some time be passed over."

At the same time that I recommend this philosophy to others, I must
confess I am so poor a proficient in it myself, that if in the course of
my Lucubrations it happens, as it has done more than once, that my paper
is duller than in conscience it ought to be, I think the time an age
till I have an opportunity of putting out another, and growing famous
again for two days.

I must not close my discourse upon silence, without informing my reader,
that I have by me an elaborate treatise on the Aposiopesis called an "Et
caetera," it being a figure much used by some learned authors, and
particularly by the great Littleton, who, as my Lord Chief Justice Coke
observes, had a most admirable talent at an et cetera.[94]

ADVERTISEMENT.

To oblige the Pretty Fellows, and my fair readers, I have thought fit to
insert the whole passage above mentioned relating to Dido, as it is
translated by Mr. Dryden:

_Not far from thence, the mournful fields appear;
So called, from lovers that inhabit there.
The souls, whom that unhappy flame invade