rs."
"Normally constructed, great poems consist of thirteen cantos,
decomposed into parts, sections, and groups like my chapters, saving the
complete equality of the groups and of the sections." "This difference
of structure between volumes of poetry and of philosophy is more
apparent than real, for the introduction and the conclusion of a poem
should comprehend six of its thirteen cantos," leaving, therefore, the
cabalistic numeber seven for the body of the poem. And all this
regulation not being sufficiently meaningless, fantastic, and
oppressive, he invents an elaborate system for compelling each of his
sections and groups to begin with a letter of the alphabet, determined
beforehand, the letters being selected so as to compose words having
"a synthetic or sympathetic signification," and as close a relation as
possible to the section or part to which they are appropriated.

Others may laugh, but we could far rather weep at this melancholy
decadence of a great intellect. M. Comte used to reproach his early
English admirers with maintaining the "conspiracy of silence" concerning
his later performances. The reader can now judge whether such reticence
is not more than sufficiently explained by tenderness for his fame, and
a conscientious fear of bringing undeserved discredit on the noble
speculations of his early career.

M. Comte was accustomed to consider Descartes and Leibnitz as his
principal precursors, and the only great philosophers (among many
thinkers of high philosophic capacity) in modern times. It was to their
minds that he considered his own to bear the nearest resemblance. Though
we have not so lofty an opinion of any of the three as M. Comte had, we
think the assimilation just: thes were, of all recorded thinkers, the
two who bore most resemblance to M. Comte. They were like him in
earnestness, like him, though scarcely equal to him, in confidence in
themselves; they had the same extraordinary power of concatenation and
co-ordination; they enriched human knowledge with great truths and great
conceptions of method; they were, of all great scientific thinkers, the
most consistent, and for that reason often the most absurd, because they
shrank from no consequences, however contrary to common sense, to which
their premises appeared to lead. Accordingly their names have come down
to us associated with grand thoughts, with most important discoveries,
and also with some of the most extravagantly wild and ludicro