But this was too vast an idea for the human intellect. The distribution of beings, assigned to the different parts of nature, was an accommodation to human weakness, a deduction of philosophy, whether true or false; a deduction, which, being favourable to the views of priests and philosophers, found a ready acceptation, and was formed in India and Ægypt long before it mingled with the Grecian superstitions. Poetry also had its share in extending the sphere of my. thology. She gave to every thing a local habitation and a name. Nothing was so humble which she could not exalt, nor so distant which she could not bring nigh. She found beauty every where, gave reality to non-existences, and converted abstract ideas into divinities: Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, The guttur'd rocks, and congregated sands, As having sense of beauty, did omit Their mortal natures. Shakspeare's Othello. We may perceive the natural tendency of poetry to extend the boundaries of mythology, by Homer's admired personifications in the fourth book of the Iliad, which the reader will take in Mr. Pope's fine translation * Each host now joins, and each a god inspires; δε * Ngor Αρεος ανδροφόνοιο κασίγνητε, εταξη τε, Ητ' ολίγη μεν πρώτα κορύσσεται, αυταρ έπειτα : Iliad. iv. 440. Pale Flight around and dreadful Terror reign, While scarce the skies her horrid head can bound, The groan still deepens, and the battle burns: and by several of Horace's odes, and more particularly the Orphic Hymns, we see how these imaginary personages slipped into the pagan calendar, and shared divine honours with the other gods who were supposed to govern the universe: thus Horace's ode to Fortune: O Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium, O goddess, Antium's guardian power! Lib. i. ode 35. In this ode, too, Necessity, Hope, and Friendship, are personified, and have their appropriate emblems. And thus the following Orphic Hymn, which the reader will be pleased to take in Mr. Thomas Taylor's translation: TO THE SEASONS. The Fumigation from Aromatics. Vernal, and grassy, vivid, holy powers, Whose balmy breath exhales in lovely flowers, With Ceres triumphing, and Love divine, And make a novel mystic's life your care. In these Hymns, not only Protogenus or Phanes, the first apparent king of the universe, is addressed, together with the whole genera of gods, but also Justice, Equity, Law, Health, and the like; and as each had its appropriate offering, so had each its appropriate temple. Other causes, besides philosophy and poetry, operated in this curious process. The practice of celebrating the praises of the illustrious dead in odes and hymns and funeral orations, a practice which prevailed among the most civilized nations †, no less than among the most * From the Mystical Initiations, or Hymns of Orpheus, by Thomas Taylor. + This is exemplified, as it regards the Greeks, in Pericles's admired Funeral Oration, and Plato's imitation of it in his Menexenus: and how this practice has prevailed among the nations of Europe, as well as of China, Peru, and the barbarous nations, see Dr. Brown's History of the Origin and Progress of Poetry among different Nations. From the admiration of great actions, men proceeded to deify the heroes. Tuque adeo, quem mox quæ sint habitura Deorum Virg. Georg. l. i. 24. And chiefly thou, whose undetermined state barbarous; the custom of introducing the gods of one country to the acquaintance of another; the study of that occult science called astrology; the use, or rather the perverted application, of ancient hieroglyphics † ;these and other causes, probably, conspired to produce the same effect; I mean, to introduce that jumble of opinions, that amalgamation of human wisdom and human follies, which composed ancient fable ;-a mixture of the true and the false, of poetry and philosophy, of piety and priestcraft; of inventions, which politicians might think beneficial in civil institutions, with something of bold imposture ;—a system, which, if it became in some respects corrupted, in others became a system misconceived and misconstrued: for let us here do jus Whether in after-times to be declared The patron of the world, and Rome's peculiar guard; And round the seasons of the year to guide: * Livii Hist. lib. 1. Dryden. † Our imaginations may be assisted to conceive how this may have happened, in observing the impression made on the mind by the delineation of the different sacred animals and plants, as seen in some books on the ancient Ægyptian Hieroglyphics; such as in Kircher's first volume of his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, and in a Latin and French translation of Horapollo's Hieroglyphics. These hieroglyphics, when seen in temples, would have a more awful effect. See this subject illustrated by the Abbé Le Pluche, in his Histoire des Cicls. tice to the poets, and not suppose that they always believed their own representations: let us do justice to philosophers, and not imagine, that though they might talk with the vulgar, they always thought with them: let us do justice to mankind at large, and not suppose that they originally intended to ascribe life to stocks and stones, or to pay the most odious beings religious adoration. But be the ancient mythology what it may, it threw open those vast, those boundless regions, so soothing to human expectancy, so favourable to poetic imagination; -regions inhabited by gods, goddesses, dæmons, heroes; by genii, nymphs, and deified passions; by fairies, dragons, giants, and enchanted castles;-regions these, though in appearance often very distant from each other, which yet possessed some common sympathies and striking resemblances, which have led to a belief, that they had some common relation, or were produced by a similar association of ideas. These fables, though in their course they might carry along with them some muddy streams, were perhaps pure in their source, simple and innocent in their tendencies. They seem at least to have suited man in a particular age, and under particular climate, prone as he was to credulity, and fond of the marvellous. Through the instrumentality of the personages, of whom such histories treat, human affairs moved in a wider circumference,— all nature experienced a metamorphosis,-the most ordinary concerns of life wore an air of majesty,—and what would otherwise have been clogged with flesh and sense, |