In reference to the discovery of America by Madoc, pp. 7 12 25 57, it may amuse your readers to be informed that Seneca shadows forth such a discovery:--
"Venient annis sæcula seris Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Ichthysque novos deteget orbes; Nec sit terris ultima Thule." _Medea_, act ii, ad finem, v. 375.
"A vaticination," says the commentator, "of the Spanish discovery of America." It is certainly a curious passage.
In Mr. Dugald Stewart's _Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical Philosophy_ he says of Lord Shaftesbury's work entitled _Characteristics_--
"It seemed to have the power of changing the temper of its critics. It provoked the amiable Berkeley to a harshness equally unwonted and unwarranted; while it softened the rugged Warburton so far as to dispose the fierce, yet not altogether ungenerous, polemic to price an enemy in the very heat of conflict."
To this passage is appended the following note:--
"Berkeley's _Minute Philosopher_, Dialogue 3; but especially his _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, London, 1733 (not republished in the quarto edition of his works), where this most excellent man sinks for a moment to the level of a railing polemic."
Can you or any of your readers do me the favour to inform me whether the tract here referred to has been included in any subsequent edition of the Bishop's works, and, if not, where it is to be met with?
Mr. Editor,--Although your cleverly conceived publication may be considered as more applicable to men of letters than to men of figures, yet I doubt not you will entertain the subject I am about to propound: because, in the first place, "whole generations of men of letters" are implicated in the criticism; and, in the next place, because however great, as a man of figures, the critic may be, the man of letters criticised was assuredly greater.
Professor de Morgan has discovered a flaw in the great Johnson! and, in obedience to your epigraph, "_when found make a note of it_," he _has_ made a note of it at the foot of page 7, of _The Companion to the Almanac for 1850_,--eccola:--
"The following will show that a palpable absurdity will pass before the eyes of _generations of men of letters_ without notice. In Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ (chapter viii. of the edition with chapters), there is given a conversation between Dr. Adams and Johnson, in which the latter asserts that he could finish his Dictionary in three years.