[13] I cannot prevail on myself to pass over this subject without paying my humble tribute to the memory of Sir W. Jones, who has laboured so successfully in Oriental literature, whose fine genius, pure taste, unwearied industry, unrivalled and almost prodigious variety of acquirements, not to speak of his amiable manners and spotless integrity, must fill every one who cultivates or admires letters with reverence, tinged with a melancholy which the recollection of his recent death is so well adapted to inspire. I hope I shall be pardoned if I add my applause to the genius and learning of Mr. Maurice, who treads in the steps of his illustrious friend, and who has bewailed his death in a strain of genuine and beautiful poetry, not unworthy of happier periods of our English literature.
[14] Especially those chapters of the third book, entitled, _Temperamentum circa Captivos_, &c. &c.
[15] Natura enim juris explicanda est nobis, _eaque ab hominis repetenda naturâ_.--_Cic. de Leg._ lib i. c. 5.
[16] Est autem virtus nihil aliud quam in se perfecta atque ad summum perducta natura.--_Cic. de Leg._ lib. i. c. 8.
[17] Search's Light of Nature, by Abraham Tucker, esq., vol. i. pref. p. xxxiii.
[18] Bacon, Dign. and Adv. of Learn. book ii.
[19] See on this subject an incomparable fragment of the first book of Cicero's Economics, which is too long for insertion here, but which, if it be closely examined, may perhaps dispel the illusion of those gentlemen, who have so strangely taken it for granted, that Cicero was incapable of exact reasoning.
[20] This progress is traced with great accuracy in some beautiful lines of Lucretius:
---- Mulier conjuncta viro concessit in unum, castaque privatæ veneris connubia læta cognita sunt, prolemque ex se vidère coortam: TUM GENUS HUMANUM PRIMUM MOLLESCERE COEPIT. ---- puerisque parentum Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum. _Tunc et amicitiam coeperunt jungere_ habentes Finitima inter se, nec lædere nec violare. Et pueros commendârunt muliebreque sêclum Vocibus et gestu cum balbè significarent IMBECILLORUM ESSE ÆQUUM MISERIER OMNIUM.
[21] The introduction to the first book of Aristotle's Politics is the best demonstration of the necessity of political society to the well-being, and indeed to the very being, of man, with which I am acquainted. Having shewn the circumstances which render man necessarily a social being, he justly concludes, "[Greek: Kai oti anthropos physei politikon zôon.]"--_Arist. de Rep._ lib. i.