HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE, - Horntip

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learned men as well as himfelf, but even to fome ages
too. You know that faying of your Celfus—Light
wits, becaufe they have nothing, detraa nothing from
themfelves ; a fingle confeffion of error agrees with a
great wit, who yet will retain, for all that miftake,
many valuable things : and why fhould not an error
deferve pardon, which the perfon does not incur by
his own obfflnacy, but by the infelicity of the age he
lives in ?
As for what he relates in the beginning of the
epiffle, of the cure of diftempers by flogging, that
depends upon the authority of others, and is beyond
all exceptions. The moderns, however, feem to ac-
count thefe remedies, if not worfe than the difeafe,
yet very ungrateful ones. Yet, as to the cure of
madnefs by ftrokes, which he quotes from Ccelius
Aurelius, Rhafes, and others, although phyficians have
not taken notice of it lately, yet I learn from Bodin
that it was praCtifed but in this laft age in England.
The paffage ftands thus in the fifth book of his com-
monwealth :—Madnefs fometimes is heightened into
frenzy, which kind of frenzy grows milder by ftrokes
and whipping ; for a company of madmen in London,
confined