Oh! he would hide his wreath of rays, There is a cave beneath the steep, ' Tell the imperial God, who reigns Sublime in oriental fanes, Whose towering turrets paint their pride Upon Euphrates' pregnant tide; 3 The Corycian Cave, which PAUSANIAS mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were chil dren of the river Plistus. See a preceding note, page 91. It should seem that lunar spi rits were of a purer order than spirits in general, as Pythagoras was said by his followers to have descended from the regions of the moon. The heresiarch Manes too imagined that the sun and moon are the residence of Christ, and that the ascension was nothing more than his flight to those orbs. Temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon, which consisted of several chapels and towers. In the last tower (says HERODOTUS) is a large chapel, in which there lies a bed, very splendidly ornamented, and beside it a table of gold; but there is no statue in the place. No man is allowed to sleep here, but the apartment is appropriated to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldean priests, the deity selects from the women of the country, as his favourite."-Lib. i, cap. 181. The poem now before the reader, and a few more in the present collection, are taken from a work, which I rather prematurely announced to the public, and which, perhaps very luckily for myself, was interrupted by my voyage to America. The following fragments from the same work describe the effect of one of these invitations of Apollo upon the mind of a young enthusiastic girl Delphi heard her shrine proclaim, In oracles, the guilty flame. How often ere the destined time, To meet, at morn, the mounting sun, I thought-alas! the simple dream- Tell him, when to his midnight loves In mystic majesty he moves, A mystery, more divinely warm'd Happy the maid, whom Heaven allows To break for Heaven her virgin vows! Happy the maid!-her robe of shame Is whiten'd by a heavenly flame, Whose glory, with a lingering trace, Shines through and deifies her race! Oh, virgin! what a doom is thine! Fly to the cave, Aphelia, fly; There lose the world and wed the sky! Oft too, at day's meridian hour, If, through the grove, whose modest arms No deity at midnight came: 'FONTENELLE, in his playful rifacimento of the learned materials of Van-Dale, has related in his own inimitable manner an adventure of this kind which was detected and exposed at Alexandria.-See Histoire des Oracles, seconde dissertat. chap. vii. CRESILLON, 100, in one of his most amusing little stories, has made the Génie MangeTaupes, of the Isle Jonquille, assert this privilege of spiritual beings in a manner very formidable to the husbands of the island. He says, however, « Les maris ont le plaisir de rester toujours dans le doute; en pareil cas, c'est une ressource. Let me but see that snowy arm Once more upon the dear harp lie, And I will cease to dream of harm, Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh! Give me that strain, of mournful touch, As now, alas! they bleed to know! Sweet notes! they tell of former peace, Art thou too wretched? yes, thou art; A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY. "T was on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met 1 In PLUTARCH'S Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals, and conversed with them; the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περι την ερυθραν θάλασσαν εύρον, ανθρώποις ανα παν ετος άπαξ εντυγχάνοντα, τ' αλλα δε συν ταις νυμφαις, νόμασι και δαίμοσι, ὡς ἔφασκε. He spoke in a tone not far removed from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a fragrance filled the place: youevo de τον τόπον ευωδία κατείχε, του ςόματος ήδιςον απο πνεοντος. From him Cleombrotus learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the poem of HEINSIUS . In barmoniam quam paulo ante obitum audire sibi visus est Dousa.. Page 501. O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore,' To him,3 who traced upon his typic lyre 'Cham, the son of Noah, is supposed to have taken with him into Orpheus.-PAULINUS, in his Hebdomades, cap. 2, lib. iii, has endeavoured to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a diapente, which is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient philosophers illustrated their sublime theories, must have tended very much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with associations of the grandest and most interesting nature. See a preceding note, page 92, for their ideas upon the harmony of the spheres. Heraclitus compared the mixture of good and evil in this world to the blended varieties of harmony in a musical instrument (PLUTARCH, de Anime Procreat.); and Eury hamus, the Pythagorean, in a fragment preserved by Stobaeus, describes human life, in its perfection, as a sweet and well-tuned lyre. Some of the ancients were so fanciful as to suppose that the operations of the memory were regulated by a kind of musical cadence, and that ideas occurred to it . per arsin et thesin; while others converted the whole man into a mere harmonized machine, whose motion depended upon a certain tension of the body, analogous to that of the strings in an instrument.Cicero indeed ridicules Aristoxenus for this fancy, and says, let bim teach singing, and leave philosophy to Aristotle; but Aristotle himself, though decidedly opposed to the harmonic speculations of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, could sometimes condescend to enliven his doctrines by reference to the beauties of musical science; as, in the treatise, Пept zooμov, attributed to him, Kadanep de ε χορό, κορυφαίου κατάρξαντος, κ. τ. λ. Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on ginal and exclusive. The doctrine of the world's eternity may be The paradoxical notions of the Staics, upon the beauty, the riches, his Paradoxes, calls them Socratica; and LIPSIUS, exulting in the patronage of Socrates, says, « Ille totus est noster. This is indeed a coalition which evinces, as much as can be wished, the confused similitude of ancient philosophical opinions: the father of scepticism is here enrolled amongst the founders of the Portico; he whose best knowledge was that of his own ignorance, is called in to authorize the pretensions of the most obstinate dogmatists in all antiquity. RUTILIUS, in his Itinerarium, has ridiculed the sabbath of the Jews, as lassati mollis imago Dei; but EPICURUS gave an eternal holiday his gods, and, rather than disturb the slumbers of Olympus, denied at once the interference of a Providence. He does not, however, seem to have been singular in this opinion. THEOPHILUS of Antioch, if he deserve any credit, in a letter to Autolycus, lib. iii, imputes a similar belief to Pythagoras: prat (NiJzyspas) të tav παντως πεους ανθρώπων μηδεν φροντίζειν and PieraRCH, though so hostile to the followers of Epicuras, bas unaccountably adopt d the very same theological error; having quoted the opinions of Anaxagoras and Plato upon divinity, he adds, Korvos OUY ἁμαρτάνουσιν αμφότεροι, ότι τον θεον εποίησαν επι The Abbé BATTEUX, upon the doctrine of the Stoics, attributes to those philosophers the same mode of illustration. L'àme était cause active, let alios, le corps canse passive de Tou Tagyεty.to L'une agissant dans l'autre; et y prenant, par son action même, un caractère, des formes, des modifications, qu'elle n'avait pas par elle même; à peu près comme l'air, qui, chassé dans un instrument de musique, fait connaitre par les différens sons qu'il produit, les différentes modifications qu'il y reçoit." See a fine simile of this kind in Cardinal POLIGNAC's Poem, lib. 5, v. 734. Pythagoras is represented in JAMBLICHUS as descending with great solemuity from Mount Carmel, for which reason the Carmelites have claimed him as one of their fraternity. This Mochus or Moschus, with the descendants of whom Pythagoras conversed in Phanicia, and from whom be derived the doctrines of atomic philosophy, is supposed by some to be the same with Moses. HEET has adopted this iden, Démonstration évangélique, prop. iv, chap. 2, sec. 7; and Le Clerc, amongst others, has refuted it.-See Bibliath, choisie, tom. i, p. 75. It is certain, however, that the doctrine of atoms was known povo TWY AY PATYWY. -De Placit. Philosoph. lib. i, cap. 7. PLATO himself has attributed a degree of indifference to the gods, which is not far removed from the apathy of EPICURUS' heaven; as thus, in his Pailebus, where Protarchus asks, Ouxouv eixos YE ούτε χαίρειν θεους, ούτε το εναντίον; and SOCRATES answers, Πανυ μεν ουν εικός, ασχημον γουν αυτών έκατερον and promulgated long before Epicurus. « With the fountains of Democritus, says CICERO, the gardens of Epicurus were watered;" and indeed the learned author of the Intellectual System has shown, 9 85ty: while ARISTOTLE suppo es a still more absurd that all the early philosophers, till the time of Plato, were atomists. neutrality, and concludes, by no very flattering analogy, that the Deity is as incapable of virtue as of vice: all yap wotep oudey We find Epicurus, however, boasting that his tenets were new and unborrowed, and perhap few among the ancients had a stronger claim upto 851 naxız, oud" apein, outws oude Devu. — In truth, ARISTOTLE, upon the to originality; for, in truth, if we examine their schools of philosophy, Ethic. Nicomach. lib. vii, cap. 1. He notwithstanding the peculiarities which seem to distinguish them from subject of Providence, was little more correct than Epicures. each other, we may generally observe that the difference is but verbal, supposed the moon to be the limit of divine interference, excluding and trifling, and that, among those various and learned heresies, of coure this sublunary world from its influence. The first definition there is scarcely one to be selected, whose opinions are its own, ori- of the world, in his treatise, Пɛpe xogou (if this treatise be really Through many a system, where the scatter'd light Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam the work of ARISTOTLE), agrees almost verbum verbo, with that in the letter of EPICURES to PYTHOCLES; they both omit the mention of a deity; and, in bis Ethics, be intimates a doubt whether the gods feel any interest in the concerns of mankind. Ει γαρ τις επιμελεια των ανθρωπίνων ὑποθεων γίνεται. It is true, he adds, 'Domep donet, but even this is very sceptical. In these erroneous conceptions of Aristotle, we trace the cause of that general neglect which his philosophy experienced among the early Christians. PLATO is seldom much more orthodox, but the obscure enthusiasm of his style allowed them to interpret all his fancies to their purpose; such glowing steel was easily moulded, and Platonism became a sword in the hands of the fathers. The Providence of the Stoics, so vaunted in their school, was a power as contemptibly inefficient as the rest. All was fate in the system of the Portico. The chains of destiny were thrown over Ju piter himself, and their deity was like Borgia, et Cæsar et nibil. Not even the language of SENECA can reconcile this degradation of divinity: Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidam fata, sed sequitur; semper paret, semel jussit.»—lab. de Providentia, cap. 5. With respect to the difference between the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Academicians, the following words of CICERO prove that he saw but little to distinguish them from each other: Peripateticos et Academicos, nominibus differentes, re congruentes; a quibus Stoici ipsi verbis magis quam sententiis dissenserunt.»- Academic. lib. ii, 5, and perhaps what REID has remarked upon one of their points of controversy might be applied as effectually to the reconcilement of all the rest: The dispute between the Stoics and Peripatetics was probably all for want of definition. The one said they were good under the control of reason, the other that they should be eradicated.--Essays, vol. iii. In short, from the little which I know upon the subject, it appears to me as difficult to establish the boundaries of opinion between any two of the philosophical sects, as it would be to fix the landmarks of those estates in the moon, which Ricciolus so generously allotted to his brother astronomers. Accordingly we observe some of the greatest men of antiquity passing without scruple from school to school, according to the fancy or convenience of the moment. CICERO, the father of Roman philosophy, is sometimes an Academician, sometimes a Stoic: and, more than once, he acknowledges a conformity with Epicurus; non sine causa igitur, Epicurus ausus est dicere semper in pluribus bonis esse sapientem, quia semper sit in voluptatibus.-Tuscolan. Qæst. lib. v. Though often pure in his theology, he sometimes smiles at futurity as a fiction; thus, in his Oration for Cluentius, speaking of punishments in the life to come, he says, « Quæ si falsa sunt, id quod omnes intelligunt, quid ei tandem aliud mors eripuit, præter sensum doloris ?» though here perhaps we should do him justice by agreeing with bis commentator SYLVICs, who remarks upon this passage, Hæc autem dixit, ut causæ suæ subserviret. Horace roves like a butterfly through the schools, and now wings along the walls of the Porch, and now basks among the flowers of the Garden; while Virgil, with a tone of mind strongly philosophical, has left us uncertain of the sect which he espoused: the balance of opinion declares him an Epicurean, but the ancient author of his life asserts that he was an Academician, and we trace through his poetry the tenets of almos all the leading sects. The same kind of electric indifference is observable in most of the Roman writers. Thus ProPERTICS, in the fine Elegy of Cynthia, on his departure for Athens, Illic vel studiis animum emendare Platonis, Incipiam, aut hortis, do te Epicure, tuis. Lib. iii, eleg. 21. Though Broukhusius here reads, dux Epicure, which seems to fix the poet under the banners of Epicurus, even the Stoic Seneca, whose doctrines have been considered so orthodox that St Jerome has ranked him amongst the ecclesiastical writers, and Bocaccio, in his commentary upon Dante has doul ted (in consideration of the philosopher's supposed correspondence with St Paul), whether Dante should have placed him in Limbo with the rest of the Pagans-the Rigid Seneca has bestowed such commendations on Epicurus, that if only those passages of his works were preserved to us, we could not, I think. hesitate in pronouncing him an Epicurean. In the same manner we find Porphyry, in bis work upon abstinence, referring to Epicurus as an example of the most strict Pythagorean temperance; and LANCELOTTI, the author of Farfalloni degli antichi Istorici, has been seduced by this grave reputation of Epicurus into the absurd error of associating him with Chrysippus, as a chief of the Stoic School. There is no doubt, indeed, that however the Epicurean sect might have relaxed from its original purity, the morals of its founder were as correct as those of any among the ancient philosophers, and his doc From the pure sun, which though refracted all With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark; And here the old man ceased-a winged train Of nymphs and genii led him from our eyes. The fair illusion fled! and, as I waked, I knew my visionary soul had been Among that people of aerial dreams Who live upon the burning galaxy! 4 ΤΟ THE world had just begun to steal Each hope that led me lightly on, I felt not as I used to feel, No And life grew dark and love was gone! eye to mingle sorrow's tear, No lip to mingle pleasure's breath, 'T was gloomy, and I wish'd for death! tional, amiable, and consistent with our nature. M. de SABLONS, in trines upon pleasure, as explained in the letter to Menaceus, are raEncyclopédistes for their just and animated praises of Epicurus; and, his Grands hommes venges, expresses strong indignation against the discussing the question, si ce philosophe était vertueux, he denies it upon no other authority than the calumnies collected by Plutarch, who himself confesses that, on this particular subject, he consulted only opinion and report, without pausing to investigate their truth. To the facticus zeal of his illiberal rivals the Stoics, Epicurus owed Αλλά την δόξαν, ου την αληθειαν σκοπούμην, these gross misrepresentations of the life and opinions of himself Gassendi, have still left an odium on the name of his philosophy; and his associates, which, notwithstanding the learned exertions of and we ought to examine the ancient accounts of Epicurus with the same degree of cautious belief which, in reading ecclesiastical history, we yield to the declamations of the fathers against the heretics; trusting as little to Plutarch upon a dogma of this philosopher, as we would to St Cyril upon a tenet of Nestorius. 1801. The preceding remarks, I wish the reader to observe, were written at a time when I thought the studies to which they refer much more important and much more amusing than, I freely confess, they appear to me at present. LACTANTIUS asserts that all the truths of Christianity may be any oue who would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy, found dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that might form a code in no respect differing from that of the Christian. tasque diffusam colligeret in unum, ac redigeret in corpus, is proSi extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem sparsam per singulos per secfecto non dissentiret a nobis.—Inst. lib. vi, c. 7. * To povou sal sprues. This fine Platonic image I have taken from a passage in Father Bouchet's letter upon the Metempsychosis, inserted in PICART'S Cérém. Relig. tom. iv. 4 A cording to Pythagoras, the People of Dreams are souls collected together in the Gala y. Δήμος δε ονείρων, κατα Πυθα γοραν, αι ψυχαιας συναγέσθαι φησιν εις την γαλαξία». -PORPHYR. de Antra Nymph. « So, instead of displaying my graces, Thro' look, and thro' words, and thro' mien, I am shut up in corners and places, Where truly I blush to be seen!» Upon hearing this piteous confession, . But, to-morrow, sweet spirit!» he said, Be at home after midnight, and then I will come when your lady's in bed And we'll talk o'er the subject again.»> So she whisper'd a word in his ear, TO MRS To see thee every day that came, so, I wrote these words to an air which our boatmen sung to as very frequently. The wind was so unfavourable that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in aty miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St Lawrence repays all these difficulties. Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air, to which I adapted these stan |