surdity is too gross for
some geniuses, our murderer of Homer, our Hobbes, has likewise asserted,
that the belief of the immortality of the human soul was the child of
pride and speculation, unknown in Greece till long after the appearance
of the Iliad.

[660] _Oh gentle Mecon._--It was on the coast of Cochin-China, at the
mouth of this river, the Maekhaun, or Camboja of modern writers, that
Camoens suffered the unhappy shipwreck which rendered him the sport of
fortune during the remainder of his life. The literal rendering of the
Portuguese, which Mickle claims the liberty of improving, is, "On his
gentle, hospitable bosom shall he receive the song, wet from woful,
unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous
dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him whose lyre shall be
more renowned than enriched."--_Ed._

[661] _Here ere the cannon's rage in Europe roar'd._--According to Le
Comte's memoirs of China, and those of other travellers, the mariner's
compass, fire-arms, and printing were known in that empire, long ere the
invention of these arts in Europe. But the accounts of Du Halde, Le
Comte, and the other Jesuits, are by no means to be depended on. It was
their interest (in order to gain credit in Europe and at the court of
Rome) to magnify the splendour of the empire where their mission lay,
and they have magnified it into romance itself. It is pretended, that
the Chinese used fire-arms in their wars with Zenghis Khan, and
Tamerlane; but it is also said that the Sogdians used cannon against
Alexander. The mention of any sulphurous composition in an old writer
is, with some, immediately converted into a regular tire of artillery.
The Chinese, indeed, on the first arrival of Europeans, had a kind of
mortars, which they called fire-pans, but they were utter strangers to
the smaller fire-arms. Verbiest, a Jesuit, was the first who taught them
to make brass cannon, set upon wheels. And, even so late as the hostile
menace which Anson gave them, they knew not how to level, or manage,
their ordnance to any advantage. Their printing is, indeed, much more
ancient than that of Europe, but it does not deserve the same name, the
blocks of wood with which they stamp their sheets being as inferior to
as they are different from the movable types of Europe. The Chinese have
no idea of the graces of fine writing; here, most probably, the fault
exists in their language; but the total want of nature in the