uch time
and talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, in
politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding out
the art of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap from the writings
of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, or
Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St. Augustine, or
Puffendord, or Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned and
unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grains
of sense are there in their thousand folio or quarto volumes? What would
the world lose if they were committed to the flames to-morrow? Or are
they not already 'gone to the vault of all the Capulets'? Yet all these
were oracles in their time, and would have scoffed at you or me, at
common sense and human nature, for differing with them. It is our turn
to laugh now.

To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with in
society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they
see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things
ought to be. Women have often more of what is called _good sense_ than
men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and
judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on
the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason
wrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak by
rule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense,
on that account. By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, they
generally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when they
write to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of
most authors.--Uneducated people have most exuberance of invention
and the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an
uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in the
variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both of
his thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been accustomed to write
themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the
unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know
the force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to see
the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.

NOTES to ESSAY VIII

No notes for this essay.

ESSAY IX. THE INDIAN JUGGLERS

Coming forw