extent of vice are required to
stimulate the activities and secure the material well-being of a
community. The doctrine, as originally set forth, had at least an
appearance of cynicism, and is throughout not free from conscious or
unconscious sophistry; and though the theological condemnation evoked by
it was nothing short of insane, we cannot wonder that the morality of
the author's purpose was impugned. He defends this, however, in
successive additions to the work, asserting and re-asserting, by
statement and illustration, that his object has been to expose the vices
inherent to human society--in no sense to justify them; and Mr. Browning
fully accepts the vindication and even regards it as superfluous. He
sees nothing, either in the fable itself or the commentary first
attached to it, which may not equally be covered by the Christian
doctrine of original sin, or the philosophic acceptance of evil as a
necessary concomitant, or condition, of good: and finds fresh guarantees
for a sound moral intention in the bright humour and sound practical
sense in which the book abounds. This judgment was formed (as I have
already implied) very early in Mr. Browning's life, even before the
appearance of "Pauline," and supplies a curious comment on any
impression of mental immaturity which his own work of that period may
have produced.

Bernard de Mandeville was a Dutch physician, born at Dort in the second
half of the last century, but who settled in England after taking his
degree. He published, besides "The Fable of the Bees," some works of a
more professional kind. His name, as we know it, must have been
Anglicized.

DANIEL BARTOLI was a Jesuit and historian of his order. Mr. Browning
characterizes him in a footnote as "a learned and ingenious writer," and
while acknowledging his blindness in matters of faith would gladly
testify to his penetration in those of knowledge;[124] but the Don's
editor, Angelo Cerutti, declares in the same note that his historical
work so overflows with superstition and is so crammed with accounts of
prodigious miracles as to make the reading it an infliction; and the
saint-worship involved in this kind of narrative is the supposed text of
the "parleying." Mr. Browning claims Don Bartoli's allegiance for a
secular saint: a woman more divine in her non-miraculous virtues than
some at least of those whom the Church has canonized, and whose
existence has the merit of not being legendary. The saint i