that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the
most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally illustrious,
yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after
the fall of the Roman empire; but then they have been formed on these
great ancients as models, and are, consequently, only rivulets from
Platonic streams. And instances of excellence in philosophic attainments,
similar to those among the Greeks, might have been enumerated among the
moderns, if the hand of barbaric despotism had not compelled philosophy
to retire into the deepest solitude, by demolishing her schools, and
involving the human intellect in Cimmerian darkness. In our own country,
however, though no one appears to have wholly devoted himself to the
study of this philosophy, and he who does not will never penetrate its
depths, yet we have a few bright examples of no common proficiency in its
more accessible parts.

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[15] I never yet knew a man who made experiment the test of truth, and I
have known many such, that was not atheistically inclined.

[16] I have ranked Archimedes among the Platonists, because he cultivated
the mathematical sciences Platonically, as is evident from the testimony of
Plutarch in his Life of Marcellus, p. 307. For he there informs us that
Archimedes considered the being busied about mechanics, and in short, every
art which is connected with the common purposes of life, as ignoble and
illiberal; and that those things alone were objects of his ambition with
which the beautiful and the excellent were present, unmingled with the
necessary. The great accuracy and elegance in the demonstrations of Euclid
and Archimedes, which have not been equaled by any of our greatest modern
mathematicians, were derived from a deep conviction of this important
truth. On the other hand modern mathematicians, through a profound
ignorance of this divine truth, and looking to nothing but the wants and
conveniences of the animal life of man, as if the gratification of his
senses was his only end, have corrupted pure geometry, by mingling with it
algebraical calculations, and through eagerness to reduce it as much as
possible to practical purposes, have more anxiously sought after
conciseness than accuracy, facility than elegance of geometrical
demonstration.
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The instances I allude to are Shaftesbury, Akenside, Harris, Petwin, and
Sydenham. So splendid is the specim