moved with the celerity of thought. Hence it naturally assorted with religion in the ancient world; and hence its. adaptation to poetry. These personages formed the machinery of the epic, and gave a lustre to the lyric. This feigned history was mixed with the true, and gave a zest to description: in the drama, the "deo dignus vindice nodus" added all the charm of surprise, and rendered the catastrophe complete.

CHAPTER X.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED..

THE fables just mentioned, it is clear, would differ both in nature and effect from those called in Greece the Milesian*, in Italy, Sybaritic, and since in Europe, Romances. The difference was this: the latter were enchanted branches, cropped from the bowers of some neighbouring country, which did but influence a few individuals; the former, though transplanted from a distant land, became standards in the country; and as they spread all around, the inhabitants reposed under the

* Stories made up of love tales, profligate and improbable histories, called Miletian, from Miletus, a city of Ionia, in Asia Minor, whence they were derived, not till about the time of Alexander the Great. They were also called Sybaritic, from the Sybarites, a voluptuous people of Italy, among whom this sort of fable was known before it passed to Asia Minor. An account of the Miletian fables, and of the writers of them, may be seen in Photius's Bibliotheca, and Mons. Huet's Treatise on Romances. These are the fables to which Collins alludes:

By old Miletus, who so long
Has ceased his love-inwoven song,
By all you taught the Tuscan maids
In changed Italia's modern shades.

The Manners, an Ode.

shade. To speak without figure, what related to these fables or theogonies, by intermingling with religion, conversation, philosophy, commerce, with all public and private concerns,-formed what may be called the costume of the countries, where they were known, and produced a national effect: and, besides that they suited the genius of poetry, as being in part fictitious, they, in a particular manner, gave it also a peculiar language.

Thus then the matter stood during the prevalence of pagan theology. Yet it is clear, whatever relation the gods of different nations may be supposed to have had to each other, that the language of a particular country would mark out its appropriate gods, in the same manner as, in heraldry, particular arms and ensigns designate particular families: and it is evident, that should a Grecian or Roman, when addressing Jupiter or Apollo, have called them by the name of Mithras, according to the Persian mythology, of Osiris, according to the Ægyptian, or of Odin, according to the Northern; should he in like manner have confounded or intermixed Aurora and Hesper with Skinfaxi and Hrimfaxi *, or with Dellinger or Nor

• Skinfaxi and Hrimfaxi were in the Icelandic mythology, as before observed, what Aurora and Hesper were in the Grecian and Roman, namely, Morning and Evening. Dellinger, in the same mythology, was the Father of Day, and Norver, the Father of Night:

Dellinger o'er the traveller's way
Shines, gentle harbinger of day;
But sullen Night with raven wing
Did first from fatal Norver spring.

Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Scemund, translated by Amos Cottle. ver, and symbols of one country that were peculiar to another, it is evident, that in such cases he would have acted with impropriety: it would have been just the same as confounding the climate and productions of one country with those of another. What, it might be asked, have the dew of Hermon, the vines of Engaddi, the rose of Sharon, the pearls of Ceylon, the palms of Jericho, and the cedar of Lebanon, to do in characterizing Great Britain? Might it not be considered as an inconsistency, an incongruous association? And what have thundering Jove, bloody Mars, the chaste Diana, the train of Venus, and the whole assemblage of those mythological personages, to do in English poetry? Have we any sacred nymphs in our groves, or about our streams, any oracle at which we can consult Apollo ?

While the pagan religion continued, the mythological language would naturally continue too; and individuals having different opinions concerning the established fables, would still, in their language, comply with the costume of the times. For we should observe, that what-ever truths the ancient mythologies might contain in the beginning, even in the judgement of their ablest philosophers, some gross corruptions, both of speculative opinions and moral practice, succeeded. And who can be surprised in hearing it said, that the poets did not heartily believe all the fables they were in the habit of hearing and repeating? The latter Platonists supposed, that they kept clear of the difficulty in regard to Homer, by putting a mystical interpretation on some of the most censurable parts of the Iliad and Odyssey. Plutarch, who

yet inclined to the Platonic philosophy himself, speaks less mysteriously on these matters. After quoting a passage from a tragedy of Æschylus, called Weighing of ? Souls *, and some passages from Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles, which favoured the popular superstitions, he scruples not to say of them, that these great poets did not believe them †: it is clear to every one, he says, that they were feigned to excite sympathy or terror,that their horrible descriptions cannot deceive any but very silly people†: nor do we, he adds, praise them as true, but as being suited to the person speaking or suffer. ing. And certain it is that Plutarch did not believe the common notions of his time, any more than Aristotle, though he was accounted superstitious enough, and was even a priest of Apollo.

Virgil was an Epicurean, though in the beginning of his Georgics, and other places, he speaks conformably to the mythological notions of his country. There is nothing more after the manner of the Epicurean philosophy in Lucretius himself than his beautiful panegyric on a country life :

Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause;

His