d inheritance to our sons, if ever the
science survive the logomachy.

Caramuel, a famous Spanish bishop, was a grand architect of words.
Ingenious in theory, his errors were confined to his practice: he said a
great deal and meant nothing; and by an exact dimension of his
intellect, taken at the time, it appeared that "he had genius in the
eighth degree, eloquence in the fifth, but judgment only in the second!"
This great man would not read the ancients; for he had a notion that the
moderns must have acquired all they possessed, with a good deal of their
own "into the bargain." Two hundred and sixty-two works, differing in
breadth and length, besides his manuscripts, attest, that if the world
would read his writings, they could need no other; for which purpose his
last work always referred to the preceding ones, and could never be
comprehended till his readers possessed those which were to follow. As
he had the good sense to perceive that metaphysicians abound in obscure
and equivocal terms, to avoid this "confusion of words," he invented a
jargon of his own; and to make "confusion worse confounded," projected
grammars and vocabularies by which we were to learn it; but it is
supposed that he was the only man who understood himself. He put every
author in despair by the works which he announced. This famous architect
of words, however, built more labyrinths than he could always get out
of, notwithstanding his "_cabalistical_ grammar," and his "_audacious_
grammar."[46] Yet this great Caramuel, the critics have agreed, was
nothing but a puffy giant, with legs too weak for his bulk, and only to
be accounted as a hero amidst a "confusion of words."

Let us dread the fate of Caramuel! and before we enter into discussion
with the metaphysician, first settle what he means by the nature of
_ideas_; with the politician, his notion of _liberty_ and _equality_;
with the divine, what he deems _orthodox_; with the political economist,
what he considers to be _value_ and _rent_! By this means we may avoid,
what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of
words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his
predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define
and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those
rabble-charming words, which carry so much wildfire wrapt up in them."

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Turner's "History of England," i. 514

[43] We owe this curious unp