Notices respecting New Books. 143 



" The literary character of Bacon, and the uses to which his 

 writings have been put at Cambridge, (tor his principles have 

 been most successfully followed there,) are admirably expressed 

 by an elegant genius of our sister university : ' One of the most 

 extensive and improved geniuses we have had instance of in our 

 own nation, or in any other, was that of Sir Francis Bacon, Lord 

 Verulam. This great man, by an extraordinary force of nature, 

 compass of thought, and indefatigable study, had amassed to 

 him •^elf such stores of knowledge as we cannot look upon without 

 amazenent. His capacity seemed to have graspefl all that was 

 revealed in books before his time ; and not satisfied with that 

 he began to strike out new tracks of science, too many to be 

 travelled over hy any one man in the compass of the longest 

 life. These, therefore, he could only mark down, Uke imperfect 

 coastings on maps, or supposed points of lands, to be further 

 discovered and ascertained by the industry of after ages, who 

 should proceed upon his notices or conjectures*.' 



" Bacon's new philosophy deranged the old, which, in truth, 

 at least as it had been long taught in the schools, was puttino- 

 the cart before the horse, and has occasioned Horn Tooke to say, 

 justly, in the sense he there uses the term, ' If they give up 

 their doctrine of language, they will not be able to make a battle 

 for their metaphysics, the very term metaphysics being non- 

 •ense ; and all the systems of it, and controversies concerning 

 it, that are, or have been in the world, being founded in the 

 grossest ignorance of words, and of the nature of speeclif.' 



" Bacon's new philosojjhy, then, aspired to derange the old 

 metaphysics and logic, and with them the old natural philoso- 

 phy, the subtleties of the former being the foundation of the 

 latter. It, however, left a space open for a more liberal philo- 

 sophy, founded in the operations of nature, and uniform expe- 

 rience. As far as logic and metaphysics went, that place was 

 filled up by Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding ; — his 

 inquiry being, in fact, a guide to ^ewero/ metaphysical reasoning, 

 a philosophical analysis of the principles of logic (as some part is 

 of grammar), and founded on the principles of Bacon, as the 

 more sure method of philosophizingf . 



' '' Locke'j 



• Addifon. f Diversions of Purl( y, vol. i. p. 399, 2il eJit. 



■ X Bacon gives this account of Syllogism : '"' Syliogismus ad Pilncipia Scien- 

 tiarum non adiiibetur: aH media Axioniata fn.stra'adhibtlnr, cum sit sublilitali 

 naturx longeimpar:" and, asain, " Syl.logisnius ex propositionibns constat, pro- 

 positiones ex vcil)is, verba noti.,nnm res-aiaB sunt. Itaq. si noiioncs ips.T (id quod 

 basis rei est) confusic sint, et tenieic a rebus alisiracla;, nihil in lis i|ua; super- 

 itrmintiir, est firmitudinis. Itaq. Spcs est una in Inductione Vera. 



N(jvuiii Or^;;inon, lib. i. 13, 14. 



Of the two ways of reasoning by Syllo-isui and Inductiun, he elsewhere ob- 

 kervck, " At in fornii ipii quoquc induclionia, et juJicio quod per ram (if. opjis 



lOMSC 



