taire's writings, in thirty-five volumes, was
published in 1761-69, with notes by Smollett and others. The "Letters
from England" seem to have first appeared in English in 1734.]

Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them all. The
gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists in
having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having employed
it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like Sir Isaac
Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly
great man. And those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce
some) were generally so many illustrious wicked men. That man claims
our respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by
the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow creatures; he
who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it.

The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at
this time, is the most useless and the least read. I mean his "Novum
Scientiarum Organum." This is the scaffold with which the new
philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it, at
least the scaffold was no longer of service.

Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with nature, but then he knew, and
pointed out the several paths that lead to it. He had despised in his
younger years the thing called philosophy in the universities, and did
all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted
to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their
horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those
impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but
which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with
religion.

He is the father of experimental philosophy. It must, indeed, be
confest that very surprizing secrets had been found out before his
time--the sea compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil
painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure, old
men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, etc., had been
discovered. A new world had been fought for, found, and conquered.
Would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by
the greatest philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the
present? But it was far otherwise; all these great changes happened in
the most stupid and barbarous times. Chance only gave birth to most of
those inventions; and it is very probable that