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by no less an authority than Lessing-and the recent work of Dr Guhrauer. This last author has diligently availed himself of every source of information; and has not only corrected some previous errors, but has brought to light some facts hitherto unknown. Many fragments also of the philosopher's writings, which had remained buried in obscurity, enrich Erdmann's recent edition of them. It would seem, indeed, as if these writings were a mine which could not be exhausted. Consisting for the most part of Miscellaneous Papers and Correspondence, they were widely scattered, and were recovered only at intervals. In 1765, appeared a quarto volume of his posthumous works, under the Editorship of Raspe. The principal of these was the commentary on Locke's great work, and is entitled Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain. This volume is of rare occurrence. The edition of Leibnitz's works by Dutens, in six large quartos, published in 1768, was vainly styled Opera Omnia. It does not contain the pieces published by Raspe, for which Dutens, in his general preface, offers no very sufficient reason. In 1805, appeared an octavo collection of unpublished Letters, under the Editorship of I. G. H. Feder.

Dr Guhrauer's work has considerable merit; but it might have been judiciously comprised in one volume, by omitting not a few digressions on collateral subjects, in which, more Germano, the author has freely indulged. We shall also have occasion to point out some examples of prejudiced statement, into which the customary idolatries of a Biographer have betrayed him.

One of the most curious things contained in Dr Guhrauer's work is a fragment of Autobiography. Fragment as it is, it gives a striking account of the author's childhood and youth, throws a flood of light on his intellectual history, and exhibits all the prominent features of his character-even to its foibles-with a vivacity as amusing as can be found in any composition of a similar kind. As this fragment has never appeared in English, we shall take occasion to gratify the reader by a free translation of two or three paragraphs. Most of the facts are repeated, again and again, in different portions of Leibnitz's miscellaneous writings, but perhaps nowhere else so connectedly or so fully.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born at Leipsic, on the 21st of June 1646. He may be said to have been a foster-child of literature. His father, Frederic Leibnitz, was Professor of Ethics in the university of Leipsic. His mother was the daughter of William Schmuck, another Professor in the same university. His mother's sister was married to John Strauch, Professor in Jena, a celebrated jurist.

The father of Leibnitz was married thrice. He had one son

by his first marriage, and one (the subject of this sketch) by the second. He died September 5, 1652, when the future philosopher was only six years old. He left a moderate fortune, and a valuable library, which last the young Leibnitz soon began to consider the best part of his inheritance. It is with his introduction to these treasures that we commence our brief extracts from the Autobiography.

He was sent early to the Nicolai school at Leipzig; but his real education seems to have been carried on by himself, and is described in a whimsical manner in the following paragraph:

As I grew in years and strength I was wonderfully delighted with the reading of history, and having obtained some books of that kind in German, I did not lay them down till I had read them all through, Latin I studied at school; and no doubt should have proceeded at the usual slow rate, had not accident opened to me a method peculiar to myself. In the house where I lodged, I chanced to stumble on two books which a certain student had left in pledge. One, I remember, was Livy, the other the Chronological Thesaurus of Calvisius. Having obtained these, I immediately devoured them. Calvisius, indeed, I understood easily, because I had in German a book of universal history which often told me the same things; but in Livy I stuck longer; for as I was ignorant of ancient history, and the diction in such works is more elevated than common, I scarcely in truth understood a single line. But as the edition was an old one, embellished with woodcuts, these I pored over diligently, and read the words immediately beneath them, never stopping at the obscure places, and skipping over what I imperfectly understood. When I had repeated this operation several times, and read the book over and over-attacking it each time after a little interval-I understood a good deal more; with all which, wonderfully delighted, I proceeded without any dictionary till almost the whole was quite plain.'

These self-acquired accomplishments having disclosed themselves at school, Leibnitz tells us that his master was much shocked that his pupil should be making such unauthorized progress in learning.

My master, dissembling the matter, repairs to those who had the care of my education, and admonishes them that they should take care lest I should interrupt my studies by a premature and preposterous kind of reading; that Livy was just as fit for me as a "buskin for a pigmy;" that books proper for another age should be kept out of the hands of a boy, and that I must be sent back to Comenius or the lesser catechism. And without doubt he had succeeded, if there had not been present at the interview a certain erudite and well-travelled knight, a friend of the master of the house. He, disliking the envy or stupidity of the master, who, he saw, wished to measure every stature by his own, began to show, on the contrary, that it was unjust and intolerable that a budding, genius should be repressed by harshness and ignorance; rather, that a boy who gave no vulgar promise was to be encouraged, and furnished

with every kind of help. He then desired me to come to him; and when he saw that I gave no contemptible answers to the questions he put, he did not rest till he had extorted from my relatives permission to enter my father's library. At this I triumphed as if I had found a treasure. I longed to see the ancients, most of whom were known to me only by name-Cicero, Quinctilian, and Seneca, Pliny, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, and many a Latin and Greek father. These I revelled in as the fit took me, and was delighted with the wonderful variety of matter before me; so that, before I was yet twelve years old, I understood the Latin writers tolerably well, began to lisp Greek, and wrote verses with singular success. Indeed, in polite letters and in poetry, I made such progress that my friends feared lest, beguiled by the sweetness of the flattering muses, I should acquire disgust for studies more serious and rugged. But the event soon relieved them from this anxiety. For no sooner was I summoned to the study of logic, than I betook myself with great delight to the thorny intricacies which others abhorred. And not only did I easily apply the rules to examples, which, to the admiration of my preceptors, I alone did, but expressed my doubts on certain points, and already meditated some novel views, which, lest they should escape me, I committed to paper. Long after, I read some things which I had written at the age of fourteen, and was wonderfully delighted with them.'

As to his doubts, he tells us that none of his masters satisfied him, but only admonished him that it did not become a boy to busy himself with novelties, in things which he had not suf'ficiently studied. Mean time his friends were possessed by a new fear.

Those who had the care of my education-to whom my greatest obli. gation is, that they interfered as little as possible with my studies---as they had before feared lest I should become a poet, so they now dreaded lest I should stick fast in scholastic subtleties; but they did not know how little my mind could be filled with one class of subjects; for no sooner did I understand that I was destined for the study of the law, than, dismissing every thing else, I applied myself to that.

And in this way I reached my seventeenth year, happy in nothing more than this, that my studies were not directed according to the judgment of others, but by my own humour; for which reason it was that I was always esteemed chief among those of my own age in all college exercises, not by the testimony of tutors only, bat by that of my fellow disciples."

He graduated as Bachelor of Philosophy in 1663, at the early age of sixteen, and proceeded to his Master's Degree in the same Faculty in the following year. On both these occasions, and on others of a like nature, he manifested the precocity of his metaphysical talents by the subjects selected for the customary disputations. After giving an account of the dispute which prevented his offering himself for his Doctor's Degree at Leipsic, and sent him to the University at Altdorf, Leibnitz proceeds

There,' says he, 'I took my doctor's degree in my twenty-second year, maximo omnium applausu; for when I maintained my public thesis, I discoursed with so much facility, and explained myself with so much clearness, that not the auditors only wondered at this new and unusual inpißun, specially in a lawyer, but even those who had engaged to respond, publicly acknowledged that I had excellently well satisfied them.' Refusing an offer of a Professorship at Altdorf, Leibnitz repaired to Nuremburg. While there, he happened to hear of a Society of Alchemists, who were prosecuting, with the usual success, the search after the 'philosopher's stone.' He was seized with a strong desire to become acquainted with these adepts; but, as he was absolutely ignorant of all their terms of art, he knew not how to negotiate an introduction. Happily he recollected that their ignorance must be quite equal to his own; and so, boldly extracting frem the writings of the most celebrated Alchemists, all the most obscure terms he could find, he composed a letter, of which he did not understand a syllable; and from that moment became, if one may indulge in the paradox, as knowing as themselves. What was dark to himself was happily quite clear to these illuminati, who, following their usual instinct for nonsense, or afraid to be supposed ignorant, professed to augur favourably of one who could write so profoundly. They invited him to assist at their conferences, introduced him to their laboratory, and made him their secretary.

While at Nuremburg, he met with a valuable friend and patron in the Baron de Boineburg, Chancellor of the Elector of Mentz. Chance (some say) brought them together at the hotel where Leibnitz was lodging. The Baron, who, amidst his official duties, had never ceased to cultivate science and literature, was struck with the talents and attainments of his young acquaintance. He gave him his counsel,-advised him to attach himself to Jurisprudence and History, as the studies which would furnish him with the best means of advancing himself in life, and exhorted him to repair to Frankfort-on-the-Maine for the further prosecution of those studies: meantime, he promised to endeavour to procure for him some office worthy of his talents in the Court of the Elector. With this advice Leibnitz complied, and at Frankfort abandoned himself entirely to the studies thus recommended. It was there, amidst many distractions, that he composed, in 1667, his little treatise entitled, A New Method of Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence.'* This early work displays all his principal characteristics—his vast reading, the acute

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Nova Methodus discendæ docendæque Jurisprudentiæ,

ness, originality, and comprehensiveness of his mind, and his propensity to form projects too vast for fulfilment, and to make promises which sound something like presumption. This little treatise was in the press when the Baron de Boineburg summoned him to the service of the Elector of Mentz; and the young author, with the new-developed instinct of a courtier, dedicated his work to his patron. In 1668, he followed up his Nova Methodus, by his Ratio Corporis Juris reconcinnandi,-a 'beautiful project,' as M. Jaucourt calls it-un beau projet'-nothing less in fact than a new digest of Universal Law.

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But the author we have just cited might well ask, can we believe that Leibnitz (then little more than twenty-two years of age) had sufficient light for a reform of this gigantic kind?' A faire un bon livre, as M. Jaucourt says, is all that could be expected of the splendid talents of any young philosophereven of a Leibnitz-engaged on such a subject.

In the same year, he also published his treatise De Arte Combinatoriâ; in which, though he advances many things which he afterwards saw cause to reject, he displays much of the analytical skill, and originality of conception, which afterwards made him so famous in the field of pure mathematics. The abdication of John Casimir, King of Poland, in 1668, when the elective throne was besieged by a crowd of aspirants, afforded Leibnitz his first opportunity of signalizing his talents in political discussion. Amongst the claimants was the Prince of Neuburg, and Boineburg engaged Leibnitz to support his pretensions. In this, as in one or two other cases, our author was perhaps too easily led to accept the office of advocate, before exercising that of philosopher; to accept a thesis and then examine how it could be supported. Once engaged, however, his philosophic habits of mind soon appear in this as in similar instances; and, rising above the transitory and limited subjects proposed, he expatiates on the condition of Poland, its principles of government, and the qualities it should seek in the monarchs of its choice. Though this brochure did not attain its end, Leibnitz was not without his reward. At the instigation of Boineburg he was made a member of the Council of the Elector, a post which he held till 1672. Without neglecting its duties, his ever active mind found time to produce numberless pieces on the most diversified subjects, which secured him extensive reputation, but which it is beyond our limits even to enumerate. One of his greatest projects at this period, but, like many others, never executed, was to revise and remodel the Encyclopædia of Alstedius, according to a new method, founded on the relations of the various sciences to each other. A curious publication, which appeared in 1670, was very

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