ANNALS 



OF 



PHILOSOPHY, 



SEPTEMBER, 1824, 



Article I. 



Biographical Sketch of the late Rev. JohnJosias Conybeare,MA. 



MGS. formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of 



Oxford. 



That portion of society, to the members of which intellectual 

 pursuits, in their various orders and degrees, form the chief occu- 

 pation and zest of life, may be subdivided into two classes: 

 those who are principally interested in the contemplation and 

 study of the works of the Creator forming the one ; and those 

 who are devoted to the history and investigation of the works of 

 man, constituting the other : the forms of knowledge to which 

 the pursuits of the first class give birth, and which, subsequently, 

 by forming at once the foundations and the instruments tor then- 

 own extension, afford means for the continuance of those pur- 

 suits, are the mathematical and physical sciences; whilst the 

 various species of general literature and of criticism, whether 

 relating to the efforts of the intellect and the imagination as 

 embodied in language, or in the productions of the Fine Arts, 

 together with Archaeology, or the science of Antiquities, which 

 is more or less connected with them all, are the objects of 

 attention and inquiry with the second class of society to which 



we allude. . „ . 



Now from a period not long subsequent to the rise or the 

 inductive philosophy of which Bacon was the founder, there has 

 existed a prejudice (and it is not yet extinct), that an almost 

 total neglect of the former objects of research, is necessary to 

 success with the latter ;- and vice versa:— that the study of the 

 laws of nature is incompatible with the elegant pursuits of culti- 

 vated taste ; and the investigation of the rules of criticism, and 

 of the language, the polity, and the arts of former ages, incon- 

 sistent with the development of natural phenomena. 

 New Series, vol. vm. m 



