the purpose of insuring the testimony of experience to his
principles, and in order to bind down material nature under the
inquisition of reason, and force from her, as by torture, unequivocal
answers to prepared and preconceived questions--yet still they would
not have been talked of or described, as instances of LUCK, but as
the natural results of his admitted genius and known skill. But
should an accident have disclosed similar discoveries to a mechanic
at Birmingham or Sheffield, and if the man should grow rich in
consequence, and partly by the envy of his neighbours, and partly
with good reason, be considered by them as a man below par in the
general powers of his understanding; then, "Oh, what a lucky fellow!
Well, Fortune does favour fools--that's certain! It is always so!"--
and forthwith the exclaimer relates half a dozen similar instances.
Thus accumulating the one sort of facts and never collecting the
other, we do, as poets in their diction, and quacks of all
denominations do in their reasoning, put a part for the whole, and at
once soothe our envy and gratify our love of the marvellous, by the
sweeping proverb, "Fortune favours fools."



ESSAY II.



Quod me non movet aestimatione:
Verum est [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] mei sodalis.
CATULL. xii.

(Translation.)--It interests not by any conceit of its value; but it