e vernal equinox to the middle of the Ram; the
autumnal equinox to the middle of Libra; our summer solstice to the
middle of Cancer, and our winter solstice to the middle of Capricorn.

A long time after the expedition of the Argonauts, and a year before the
Peloponnesian war, Methon observed that the point of the summer solstice
passed through the eighth degree of Cancer.

Now every sign of the zodiac contains thirty degrees. In Chiron's time,
the solstice was arrived at the middle of the sign, that is to say to the
fifteenth degree. A year before the Peloponnesian war it was at the
eighth, and therefore it had retarded seven degrees. A degree is
equivalent to seventy-two years; consequently, from the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war to the expedition of the Argonauts, there is no more
than an interval of seven times seventy-two years, which make five
hundred and four years, and not seven hundred years as the Greeks
computed. Thus in comparing the position of the heavens at this time
with their position in that age, we find that the expedition of the
Argonauts ought to be placed about nine hundred years before Christ, and
not about fourteen hundred; and consequently that the world is not so old
by five hundred years as it was generally supposed to be. By this
calculation all the eras are drawn nearer, and the several events are
found to have happened later than is computed. I do not know whether
this ingenious system will be favourably received; and whether these
notions will prevail so far with the learned, as to prompt them to reform
the chronology of the world. Perhaps these gentlemen would think it too
great a condescension to allow one and the same man the glory of having
improved natural philosophy, geometry, and history. This would be a kind
of universal monarchy, with which the principle of self-love that is in
man will scarce suffer him to indulge his fellow-creature; and, indeed,
at the same time that some very great philosophers attacked Sir Isaac
Newton's attractive principle, others fell upon his chronological system.
Time that should discover to which of these the victory is due, may
perhaps only leave the dispute still more undetermined.

LETTER XVIII.--ON TRAGEDY

The English as well as the Spaniards were possessed of theatres at a time
when the French had no more than moving, itinerant stages. Shakspeare,
who was considered as the Corneille of the first-mentioned nation, was
pretty