210 THE IMPROVEMENTOF THE MIND. without due explication of them ; another jumbles together with- out distinction, all those ideas which have any likeness ; a third is fond of explaining every word, and coining distinctions be- tween ideas which have little or no difference ; but each of these runs into extremes ; for all these practices are equal hindrances to clear, just, and useful knowledge. It is not a long train of rules, but observation and good judgment, can teach us when to explain, define, anddivide, and where to omit it. In the beginning of a treatise; it is proper and necessary sometimes to premise some praecognita or general principles, which may serve for an introduction to the subject in hand, and give light or strength to the following discourse : but it is ridicul- ous, under a pretence of such introductions or prefaces, to wander to the most remote or distantthemes, which have no near or neces- sary connexionwith the thing in hand ; this serves for noother pur- pose but to make agaudy chewof learning. Therewas a professor of divinity, who began an analytical expositionof the epistle to the Romans with such praecognita as these : first he shewed the ex- cellence of man above other creatures, who was able to declare the sense of his mind by arbitrary signs ; thenheharangued upon the origin of speech ; after that he told of the wonderful inven- tion of writing, and enquired into the author of that art which taught us to paint sounds : when he had given us the various opinionsof the learned on this point, and distributed writing into its several kinds; and laid down definitions of them all at last he came to speak of epistolary writing, and distinguished epistles into familiar, private, public,recommendatory credentials, and what, not? Thence he descended to speakof thesuperscription, subscrip- tion, &c. And some lectures were finished beforehecame to the first verse of St. Paul's epistle ; the auditors, being half starved and tired withexpectation, dropped away one by one, so that the Pro- fessor had scarce any hearers to attend the college or the lectures which he had promised on that part of scripture. The rules which Horace 'has given in his Art of Poetry, would instruct many a preacher and professor of theology, if they would but attend to them. He informs us that a wise author, such as Homer, who writes a poem of the 'Trojan war, would not begin a long and far distant story of Jupiter in the form of a swan impregnating Leda with a double egg ; from onepart where- of Helen was hatched, who was married to Menelaus a Greek general, and then stolen from him by Paris, sonof Priam king of Troy, which awakened the resentment of the Greeks against tha Trojans. Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo. But the writer, says he, makes all proper haste to the event of things, and does not drag on slowly, perpetually turning aside
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=