ON PARADOXES. OF the various modes and multiform schemes suggested by the intemperance of vanity, or aberrance of mind, to court notoriety and signalize a name, few, I believe, if any, can exceed, in extravagance of devices, the maintenance of literary paradoxes, or assertion of sentiments in abrupt collision with the regulated and prescriptive judgments of the literary world. The list of those who have thus fastidiously swerved from the beaten path, and, disdaining a subserviency to established opinions, have pursued an eccentric course, is by no means inconsiderable; far less so, it will be found on examination, than could be supposed or credited; and if Sophocles repelled the imputation of insanity by the production of one of his noblest compositions,* many, I apprehend, are the authors, against whose integrity of reason the most decisive evidence would be furnished by their own writings. To enumerate and pass in illustrative review all those whose names would emerge in this inquiry as conspicuous for the assumption, or swayed by the delusion, of singularity, would demand a larger occupation of your pages than I should feel warranted in claiming, or probably than the result would adequately requite; nor, independently of this consideration, would I descend to notice or stain your columns with a reference beyond the warning titles to such works, as Le Système de la Nature, L'Homme Machine, and other monstrous emanations of the Atheistical school, whose excess of perversion must sufficiently counteract, in every rational mind, their malignity of purpose * Οιδίπους επί Κολωνώ. "Mais l'audace est commune, et le bon sens est rare; Au lieu d'être piquant, souvent on est bizarre." My intention, therefore, after a rapid advertence to those remoter examples of waywardness of doctrine or fancy, which may be presumed more or less known to your readers, is to select a few of modern occurrence, and, as I conceive, of attractive novelty, for ampler but still brief detail. The first professed work on paradoxes that I am acquainted with is that of Cicero, containing six short essays, addressed to Brutus, on certain moral and antithetical apophthegms of the Stoic school. To these he applied the Greek expression, which he elsewhere (Quæst. Acad. lib. iv. cap. 44; and De Finibus, iv. 27) renders in Latin, mirabilia or admirabilia, and which Quintilian (lib. ix. cap. 1) more literally interprets, inopinata. These brief dissertations are usually appended to Cicero's moral treatises, De Officiis, De Senectute, and De Amicitid, and, like them, have been the fertile grounds of cumbrous annotations. The best, however, are allowed to be those of the two Aldi, Paulus Manutius, and his son Aldus Nepos, the last of a name to which classical literature is immeasurably indebted, and who, in 1581, published an edition of these treatises, which he dedicated to our Admirable Crichton, in a strain of the highest, though, it would seem, not of overcharged eulogy. This record of the accomplishments of that extraordinary young man is, I believe, the most authentic document we possess of that happy, and almost unexampled, combination of the numerous gifts of mind and body, which have entitled him to the epithet by which he is distinguished. In his commentary on the fourth paradox,† Aldus introduces, rather forcibly indeed, two compositions of his friend, which certainly evince, as likewise does an ode prefixed to Cicero De Senectute, in the same volume, no inconsiderable mastery of the + "Ori тâs äppwv μaiverai❞—a bitter invective against Cicero's mortal enemy, Clodius, and apparently, as the critic Sciopius maintains, only a fragment of a more extensive article. metre and language of Rome. But Johnson, in the Adventurer, No. 81, Kippis, in the Biographia Britannica, and Messieurs Fraser Tytler and W. H. Ainsworth, respectively in history and romance, have exhausted this theme; one, I may add, not devoid of interest, whether contemplated in a national, literary, or even philosophi cal view. In the ancient schools of sophists and rhetoricians, which were frequented by the most eminent orators and statesmen for the cultivation of eloquence or exercise of wit, many of the debateable questions might well be classed in this category of paradoxes, as the Μελέται Αγώνες σχολασTIXO of the Greeks, and the Controversie and Declamationes of the Latins, will show. Of the latter we have still the works of the elder Seneca and of Quintilian, which, to the reader of the present day, are mere rhapsodies or puerile amplifications; nor are what remain of the Greeks, in Lucian, Libanius, Aristides, &c. much superior in character; and the possessor of the Aldine collection (1508, folio) will be seldom tempted to soil the volume, precious for its rarity, by too frequent perusal. Yet the institutor of these scholastic contentions, Gorgias Leontinus, the contemporary of Pericles and Plato, and remarkable for having attained the extraordinary age of one hundred and seven years, was held in such high estimation, that the unprecedented honour of a statue, not gilt, as was customary, but of solid gold, was paid him.-"Cui tantus honos habitas est à Græciâ, soli ut ex omnibus, Delphis, non inaurata statua, sed aurea statueretur." (Cicero de Oratore, lib. iii. 32.) The philosophers of Greece, (or those who assumed the more modest title of lovers rather than that ofpossessors ofwisdom, arrogated by the sophists,) were, however, in general, not less prepared to uphold the most anomalous opinions, and thus, as the elder Cato thought, to unsettle or confound the principles of truth and demarcations of justice. Accordingly, when (U. C. 597) the Athenians, in deprecation of the penalty imposed on them by the Senate, for having pillaged the town of Oropus, despatched three philosophers, Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, to plead their cause, Cato, on being apprized of the doctrines promulgated by them, insisted on their expulsion from the city. (Plutarch. in Cat. Maj. cap. 44.) Carneades, the most eloquent of them it appears, would one day deliver an attractive discourse in favour of justice, and the next day argue with equal ability against it.* Ηγε δ ̓ οὖν καὶ οὗτος, καὶ ȧnépeрev-he built and destroyed. This chief of the third Academic School even denied the fundamental axiom of all reasoning," that two substances equal to a third must be equal to one another." "Carneades ne illud quidem, quod est omnium evidentissimum, concedit esse credendum, quòd magnitudines uni cuipiam æquales, sint etiam inter sese æquales." And yet the system of the Academy, or, as expressed by Cicero (De Naturâ Deorum, lib. i. cap. 5), "ratio contra omnia disserendi. profecta a So crate, repetita ab Arcesila, confirmata a Carneade," was only a modification of the Pyrrhonian doctrine-" ovdev epicw, I determine nothing." After the restoration of letters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several writers, such as Erasmus, Heinsius, &c. exercised their wit and beguiled their leisure in paradoxical or ironical panegyrics. Among these, the Encomium Moriæ, or Praise of Folly, is justly pre-eminent; and other jeux d'esprit, collected by the Elzevirs, (1629, in 24mo.) are not without the merit of ingenuity or power of amusement, as the readers of the Encomium Neronis, the Laus Asini, &c. will find. It would not be difficult to extend this catalogue of eccentric works, or prove that strange theories have sway *It is similarly related of Cardinal Perron that, after eloquently expatiating against Atheism, he offered to take its defence; but this is one of the apocryphal stories of the Ana, in resentment, probably, of his triumph, at the conference of Fontainebleau, over Duplessis Mornay, which his enemies wished to represent rather as the result of talent than of conviction. GENT. MAG. VOL. X. 3 P ed every æra of philosophy and literature. No inconsiderable portion of the questions agitated by the schoolmen of the middle ages, Peter Lombard, Abelard, Scotus, &c. partook of this character; and few, I apprehend, are the schemes of metaphysics that do not involve some paradox. The most startling, probably, is the immaterial system of my countryman, Berkeley, difficult alike of belief or confutation, unless, perhaps, by the argumentum ad calcem of Dr. Johnson.* In a conversation which I once had on this subject with the late Richard Kirwan, President of the Royal Irish Academy, &c. he told me that, on completing his collegiate studies under the Jesuits, he proceeded to Paris, where he was introduced by his cousin, the Chevalier d'Arcy, a member, though an Irishman, of the Academy of Sciences, to D'Alembert, then in active superintendance of that heterogeneous compilation, L'Encyclopédie, to which he contributed a splendid preface-"un vestibule digne de l'edi fice," as it was fitly called, and the literary dictator of the French metropolis. During the interview, which occurred in 1762 (I think), Kirwan, with the unhesitating confidence of youth, applied some disparaging epithets to his countryman's theory; for which he was paternally, as he expressed it, though warmly reproved by D'Alembert, and in words that equally regulated his future conduct, and remained uneffaced on his memory. "Gardez vous bien, jeune homme, de hasarder des jugemens sur ce qui dépasse, de nécessité, la portée actuelle de votre intelligence. C'est un terrible adversaire, un redoutable jousteur, pour me servir du mot des Montaigne, que votre compatriote; et, sans me ranger de son avis, je ne me sens pas de force à entrer en lice avec lai, ou à lui disputer son terrain; mais, à coup sûr, il faudrait une tête plus forte, et une plume plus exercée qu'il n'est donné à votre âge d'avoir, pour renverser ce système, tout paradoxal qu'il paroisse.”† * "Striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he (Johnson) rebounded from it. I refute it (Berkeley's system) thus."-(Croker's edition of Boswell, vol. i. p. 484.) Boswell adds, that Burke would have undertaken the refutation, had not politics interrupted his philosophical pursuits. It would have been a noble contest. † On the same occasion this gentleman, one of the most generally learned I ever met, showed me a letter in answer to one which he had addressed to the celebrated Lavoisier, who from pressure of time had delegated the reply to his wife. She nearly filled the entire sheet, only leaving room for her husband to add, "Je n'ai pas le tems de relire cette longue lettre de ma femme; mais ne croyez pas un mot de ce qu'elle vous écrit,"—a strange conclusion, though of course in pleasantry, but sufficiently significative, as Mr. Kirwan thought, of the inherent frivolity of the national character. This letter, which I saw in 1797, was dated, I think, in 1793, not long anterior to the great chemist's execution, which took place the 8th May, 1794,-" Il n'a fallu qu'un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années, peut-être, ne suffiront pas pour en réproduire une semblable," mournfully remarked Lagrange, the first of modern geometricians. A prisoner then myself, no comfortable position under the rule of Robespierre, and in the days of terror, I cannot forget the impression produced by such a sacrifice, which left little hope of mercy to the inferior victims of the tyrant's sway, unless, indeed, as certainly was my own case, their very insignificance became their safeguard; while, with such men as Lavoisier, their fame and merit doomed them to certain death-" Magnitudo fama illis exitio erat." (Tacit. Annal. iii. 55.) Cuvier's most interesting volume, " Rapport Historique sur les progrès des Sciences Naturelles depuis 1789,” (Paris, 1829, 4 vols. 8vo.) is well worth consulting in relation to Lavoisier, whose widow remarried with Count Rumford; but the union, it is known, was not happy. In 1830, during the late revolution, she resided in the "rue neuve des Mathurins," where I was her neighbour; for it happened to me, what was necessarily of rare occurrence in a foreigner, to have witnessed the two revolutions at an interval of forty-one years; one in very early youth, the other, of course, in advanced life. "Tristia ad recordationem exempla, sed ad præcavendum simile utili documento sint." (Livy, lib. xxiv. cap. 8.) Mr. Kirwan, I should observe, spoke and wrote the French language with the purity of a native, as the famous Brissot, in the first volume of his Memoirs, states. This was some compensation for the refusal of education at home in that day to Catholics, of whom, however, he subsequently ceased to be one. But the most signal instance of literary hallucination, the coryphæus of learned visionaries, was, doubtless, the Jesuit Hardouin, not inappropriately characterised in his epitaph (the composition not, as is generally asserted, of our Bishop Atterbury, but of Jacob Vernet, professor at Geneva) as "Hominum paradoxotatus Orbis literati portentum ... docte febricitans, &c." This singular man passed a general sentence of proscription, it is well known, on all the extant productions of antiquity, which he unqualifiedly denounced as spurious, the fabrication of certain monks of the thirteenth century, with the very limited reserve of the works of Cicero (excluding, however, the Orations), the Georgics of Virgil, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, the Natural History of Pliny, and Justin Martyr's Dialogue with the Jew Tryphan. This sweeping condemnation he supported with all the array of the profoundest erudition in various publications, but more directly in his Chronologiæ ex Nummis Antiquis Restitutæ, to which is appended "Prolusio de Nummis Herodiadum," (Paris, 1693, folio.) His superiors, afflicted and scandalized at such an abuse of learning, which spared not the Greek text of Scripture, (for the original, in his fancy, was Latin,) nor the Holy Fathers, compelled him to retract; and, in 1708, he accordingly signed a declaration to that effect. His opinions, however, remained unchanged, as his posthumous works, Opuscula Varia," printed in 1733, at Amsterdam, folio, and " Prolegomena ad censuram veterum scriptorum," Londini, 1768, 8vo. which may be considered the testamentary repositories of his sentiments, amply prove. Even in the history of his own country, he D'un savant de France, Qui rêve en plein midi." * The erudite father's portentous wanderings are, however, too notorious to require further elucidation; but of his full belief in them there can be little doubt. The same certainty does not, by any means, appear to apply to the discordant impulses of the mind and pen of J. J. Rousseau, whose adoption of the paradox, "that the sciences and arts tended to corrupt rather than to improve mankind," originated, on his own avowal, in mere accident. While proceeding, in 1749, to visit his then friend Diderot, who was confined in the Château de Vincennes, for his impious little volume," Lettre sur les Aveugles," Rousseau beguiled his walk with the Mercure de France, a weekly publication, in which the Academy of Dijon had proposed for a prize essay, * Hardouin's edition of Pliny (1685, 5 vols. 4to. and 1723, 3 vols. folio) is the most esteemed of the whole collection of Classics, in usum Delphini, which, in the aggregate, by no means satisfies the laborious Germans. Even of Hardouin, Drakenborgius, the very learned editor of Livy, Silius Italicus, &c. says, "Abi et auctor sis, ut his hominibus (Doujata et Harduino) editionem Livii et Plinii in usum Delphini committat Rex Christianissimus." (Ad Livii lib. ii. cap. 10.) For the origin of these editions see the Huetiana, p. 92, where the first conception is ascribed to the Duc de Montausier, the Dauphin's Governor, who entrusted the arrangement to Bossuet and Huet. In the same volume, page 195, will be found the curious calculation to prove that the entire Iliad, consisting of 15,185 verses, could, if written on fine vellum with a crow's quill, be contained in a walnut-shell! A few pages transcribed by Huet verified the fact. being asked which side of the question he proposed embracing, as unhesitatingly answering, that it should be the affirmative. That, rejoined his friend, is the pons asinorum, a theme for mediocrity, which will be sure to find defenders enough; and Rousseau, conscious that his powers only demanded a fitting scope for their display, seized the splendid opportunity of distinguishing himself in the field of paradox; and never did sophism appear arrayed in more seductive language. All his subsequent productions were more or less imbued with his new principle the superiority of savage, or uncultivated, over civilized life;—but deeply did he regret having thus launched into the arena of philosophical dispute -"Tout le reste de ma vie et de mes malheurs fut l'effet inévitable de cet instant d'égarement;" and, when anxious to associate himself with the great body of authors in erecting a statue to Voltaire as their acknowledged chief, Rousseau, on offering his contribution, again writes, "J'ai payé assez cher le droit d'être admis à cet honneur." Voltaire, as it appears by his letter to M. de la Tourette, opposed his admission to the list of subscribers, on pretence of his not being a Frenchman; but the patriarche hated a rival in fame. Rousseau's admirers, however they may condemn his system, contend that it was founded on conviction; while La Harpe, Voltaire, Diderot, Marmontel, and Hume ascribe it to vanity and affectation. But it is quite reconcileable to our experience that fallacies, originally felt as such, though assumed for display, will eventually impress themselves on the mind as axioms of truth-a perversion of judgment not dissimilar to the effect produced on our vision by the long arrest of the eye on a single object. Rousseau, therefore, may gradually have identified himself with his theory, and become a convert to its reality while endeavouring to convince others of it. Even the originally conscious liar, by dint of repetition, persuades himself, probably before he does his hearers, that he utters only truth-" Stillicidii casus lapidem cavat." (Lucr. i. 314.) Somewhat in analogy to this subject is Diderot's admirable dissertation, in Grimm's Correspondence (tom.i.p.77), on an actor's identifying himself with, and losing his own consciousness in that of, the character he personifies, which you, Mr. Editor, have, I perceive, illustrated by the testimony of Garrick, in your Sept. Mag. p. 252, proving, concurrently with Diderot, the negative of the proposition. Though the most eloquent, the Philosopher of Geneva was by no means the first advocate of the paradox.* In 1527, the famous Henricus Cornelius * A singular instance of the indiscriminate and equally accommodating appliance of knowledge or ignorance to the same object, occurs in the first chapter of Cicero's treatise" de Naturâ Deorum," where some editors, Lambinus, Manutius, d'Olivet, Lallemand, &c. read, "De quâ (philosophiâ) tam variæ sunt doctissimorum hominum, tamque discrepantes sententiæ, ut magno argumento esse debeat, causam, id est, principium philosophiæ esse scientiam;" while other commentators, Davies, Ernesti, and most modern Germans, substitute inscientiam for scientiam. D'Olivet is more than usually liberal of extracts on this passage-no bad sample of literary pyrrhonism. Shortly follows (cap. 2) in Cicero, the assertion that unity is the indispensable character of truth, which proved so powerful an argument with Christina of Sweden in her conversion to the Roman Catholic faith-" Quorum (philosophorum) opiniones, cum tam variæ sint, tamque inter se dissidentes: alterum fieri profecto potest, ut earum nulla; alterum certè non potest, ut plus unâ vera sit." The Prussian Professor Ranke (Die Römische Päpiste, ihre Kirche und ihre Staat im sechozehnten und siebenzehnten Iahrhundert. Bände 4. Berlin, 1836,) names the circumstance, (book viii. section 9,) on the authority of Pallavicini's Life of Pope Alexander VII. but without referring directly to the passage which I have quoted. In Ranke's history, one of great research and impartiality, a curious inadvertence struck me in book v. sect. 7, where, after stating the defeat of the Geraldines of Kerry (Ireland) in 1579, under Sir James and Sir John of Desmond, by Sir Nicholas Malby and others, he adds, that the whole county of Monmouth was laid waste by the English. The author's original must have had Momonia, which the German renders Monmouth, in place of Munster; and not only the French version, but the Dublin Review, in an article on the work (No. 9), repeats the blunder. The event, in the adverse views of Irish histo |