[Footnote 9: His works are comprised in fifty-four books, which his disciple Porphyry divided into six Enneads, assigning, agreeably to the meaning of the word, nine books to every Ennead. Thomas Taylor translated parts of these only.] It were a good test of one's aptitude for metaphysical studies, his appreciation of Plotinus. Profound as any predecessor of the Platonic school of idealism, he had the remarkable merit of treating ideas in a style at once transparent and subtle, dealing with these as if they were palpable things, such was his grasp of thought and felicity in handling. His themes are of universal concernment at all times. Promoting a catholic and manly method, his books were good correctives of any exclusiveness still adhering in our schools of science and divinity, while the tendencies of his time, as in ours, were towards comparative studies. A like tendency appeared, also, in England in the studies of the British Platonists, or Latitudinarians,--Dr. Henry More, Dr. Cudworth, Dr. Rust, Norris, Glanvil, John Smith, whose writings deserve a place in theological libraries, and the study of divines especially. Norris thus praises his friend Dr. More, whose works had high repute and were much studied in his day:-- "Others in learning's chorus bear their part, And the great work distinctly share; Thou, our great catholic professor art, All science is annexed to thy unerring chair; Some lesser synods of the wise The Muses kept in universities; But never yet till in thy soul Had they a council oecumenical: An abstract they'd a mind to see Of all their scattered gifts, and summed them up in thee. Thou hast the arts whole Zodiac run, And fathom'st all that here is known; Strange restless curiosity, Adam himself came short of thee,-- He tasted of the fruit, thou bearest away the tree." And More writes of Plotinus:-- "Who such things did see, Even in the tumult that few can arrive Of all are named from philosophy, To that high pitch or to such secrets dive."[10]