siderable taste in picturesque beauty is acknowledged to be; but because, after all, a mere copyist, no less than the writer who studies nothing but metre and melody, is still inferior to a genuine poet, and cannot be expected to possess the gay freedom and manly boldness of an original and attentive observer of nature. Hence it is that Longinus is always happy to illustrate his observations on the five sources of the sublime, from the great poet, who, like his hero, described what he saw and what he felt: .... Mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes, CHAPTER IX. MYTHOLOGY. Ir is intended in this chapter to consider Mythology. "What is Mythology? We generally understand by the term, the Fabulous History of the ancient Gods and Heroes, and of their religious Mysteries. But as we find ancient mythologists, particularly Plato, Apollodorus*, and Sallust, referring fable to a heavenly origin, we should give the definition the most liberal interpretation; we should so extend the meaning of the term, as to make it embrace those histories which are allowedly, in the usual acceptation of the word, fabulous, and such as are more agreeable to the nature of things, or may assert even a divine origin: for, as before observed, "Damus hanc veniam antiquitati, &c." We allow antiquity the privilege of telling a few stories. : What a riddle and a mystery is man! Contemplate his faculties they seem at once extremely limited, yet they take a boundless range, penetrating into regions, in which the further they travel, the more they are bewildered and lost. του Apollodorus begins his BIBLIOTHECA thus: Ougaves weres Tavra idurasyon xérov. Vid. etiam Sallust. de Diis et Mundo, cap. 3. If we can conceive the point of time when men first began to think about the great power, which created and links together all the parts of the natural and intellectual world, it is probable, the first ideas would possess a certain degree of simplicity and clearness, accompanied, however, with unavoidable obscurity, an awful sense of incomprehensibility. That multiplicity of ideas, that assemblage of personages, which constitute the ancient mythologies and theogonies, has been superinduced, in the march of time, by the progress of speculative opinion, and the gradual operation of circumstances; as at the morning twilight, when an army first seen to begin its march from a distance, a white cloud arises from the surrounding dust, and soon the whole is wrapt in darkness; but, on a nearer approach, the whole army of men stands forth to view, and we may be borne down, as it were, by their brightness. Apparent facts correspond to this natural presumption: for, on inquiry into these matters, it is found, that the ancient religious rites and ceremonies of the niany Eastern nations were originally derived from Ægypt. Kircher * has gone into this curious subject much at large; and agreeably to this representation calls Ægypt emphatically, the mystical Pantheon of the whole world. Herodotus, also, observes, that the Greeks derived the names of almost all their gods from the Ægyptians †. * Kircheri Edipus Ægyptiacus, tom. i. † Σχεδόν δε και παντα ενόματα των θεων εξ Αιγύπτε ελήλυθε ες την Ελλαδα. Herodoti Hist. Euterpe, lib. ii. 50. . Before idolatry, like a day-mist, overspread the whole face of Ægypt, it possessed, amidst much that must have been incomprehensible, something like twilight views, appearing as approaches to the truth. All ancient religions seem to have proceeded on the belief of a first cause, incommunicable, indescribable, incomprehensible. And it was by an appeal to this commanding doctrine, and an attack on the idolatries superinduced on the ancient religion of mankind, that the legislator of the Jewish nation, no less than Confucius and the impostor Mahomet, gained such authority over the minds, and commanded, as by a voice from heaven, the faith, of mankind. Jamblicus, who has treated on the mysteries of the ancient Egyptians, has shown, that while maintaining a multiplicity of gods, they held them in a way of succession and subordination, as mundane and supramundane, material and intellectual powers, providing for a belief of the ONE and the GOOD, the first of the first, of whom there was no exemplar, the fountain of all things, the root and basis of all intellectual forms *. This philoso * Προ των οντως οντων, και των όλων αρχών εσι θεος εις, πρώτος και το πρωτο θες και βασιλέως, εν μονοτητι της εαυτ8 ενότητος μένων· οὔτε γαρ νοητον αυτω επιπλέκεται, 8τε αλλο τι παραδειγμα δε ίδρυται τα αυτ τοπάτορος Θε8, τε οντως αγαθε μείζον γαρ τι και πρωτον, και πηγή των παντων, και πυθμην των νοεμένων πρωτων ειδων οντων. Jamblicus de Ægypt. Must. lib. viii. cap. 2. And again ; Πάσι δε, αυτόν υπερα έχοντα αυτών, ενα προτιθεασι και ούτως ανωθεν αχρι των τελευταίων η περί των αρχών Αιγυπτίοις πραγματεία, αφ' ενός αρχεται, και προσεια σιν εις πλήθος των πολλών, αυθις υφ' ενός διακυβερνωμένων μετ' αληθειας, phy, 'transported out of Egypt, was introduced into Greece by Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato; and the To EN and the TO ON, accordingly, is, as it were, the first stone in their mystic temple, the same in import as them, the Jehovah of the Hebrews. This subject is introduced into Plato's Politicus, and the fifth book of his Republic. The same was also, most probably, the import of the monosyllable, El, inscribed over the gates of the temple of Apollo at Delphos, EI EN, "Thou art one," as Plutarch observes in his Treatise on that subject. If, with others, we consider India as the parent stock of all these mythologies, still we shall find them terminating in similar doctrines, which at once simplified and set a boundary to belief. For the Oriental philosophy, though, like the Ægyptian, it had a theological nomenclature, and ranged through all nature for gods, good and bad dæmons, still had a point of rest, in a cause of causes, from whom sprung ideas, those patterns or exemplars of all forms, intellectual and material, which exist through the universe. These ideas may be traced in Stanley's History of the Oriental Philosophy, and what are called Fragments of the Chaldaic Philosophy, subjoined to Le Clerc's Latin translation of that work. Φθα. Ελληνες εις Ηφαιςον μεταλαμβάνουσι του Φθα, τω τεχνικω μόνον προσβαλλοντες· αγαθων δε ποιητικος ων Όσιρις κέκληται, και άλλας δι αλλας δυνάμεις τε και εναργειας επωνομίας έχει. He then proceeds to show that there are other principalities, and that there is one in each that presides over the rest. Sect. viii, cap. 3. |