Your lonely murmurs, tarry: and receive a Love Elder Elder than Chaos.] Hefiod, in his Theogony, gives a different account, and makes Chaos the eldest of beings; though he affigns to Love neither father nor fuperior; which circumftance is particularly mentioned by Phædrus, in Plato's Banquet, as being obfervable not only in Hefiod, but in all other writers both in verse and prose: and on the fame occafion he cites a line from Parmenides, in which Love is exprefsly ftyled the eldeft of all the gods. Yet Ariftophanes, in The Birds, affirms, that "Chaos, and Night, and Erebus, "and Tartarus, were firft; and that Love was produced from an egg, "which the fable-winged night depofited in the immenfe bofom of "Erebus «Erebus." But it must be observed, that the Love defigned by this comic poet was always diftinguished from the other, from that original and felf-exiftent being the TO ON or ATA ON of Plato, and meant only the AHMIOTPROE or fecond perfon of the old Grecian trinity; to whom is infcribed an hymn among those which pass under the name of Orpheus, where he is called Protogonos, or the firft-begotten, is faid to have been born of an egg, and is reprefented as the principal or origin of all thefe external appearances of nature. In the fragments of Orpheus, collected by Henry Stephens, he is named Phanes, the difcoverer or discloser; who unfolded the ideas of the fupreme intelligence, and exposed them to the perception of inferior beings in this vifible frame of the world; as Macrobius, and Proclus, and Athenagoras, all agree to interpret the feveral paffages of Orpheus, which they have preferved. But the Love defigned in our text is the one self-existent and infinite mind, whom if the generality of ancient mythologists have not introduced or truly described in accounting for the production of the world and its appearances; yet, to a modern poet, it can be no objection that he hath ventured to differ from them in this particular; though, in other refpects, he profeffeth to imitate their manner and conform to their opinions. For, in these great points of natural theology, they differ no less remarkably among themselves; and are perpetually confounding the philosophical relations of things with the traditionary circumstances of mythic history; upon which very account, Callimachus, in his Hymn to Jupiter, declareth his diffent from them concerning even an article of the national creed; adding, that the ancient bards were by no means to be depended on. And yet in the exordium Orpheus, it is faid, that of the old Argonautic poem, afcribed to "Love, whom mortals in later times call Phanes, was the father of "the eternally begotten Night;" who is generally represented, by these mythological poets, as being herself the parent of all things; and who, in the Indigitamentą, or Orphic Hymns, is faid to be the fame with Cypris, or Love itfelf. Moreover, in the body of this Argonautic poem, where the perfonated Orpheus introduceth himself finging to his lyre in reply to Chiron, he celebrateth "the obfcure memory of Chaos, "and the natures which it contained within itself in a state of perpc"tual viciffitude; how the heaven had its boundary determined; the "generation of the earth; the depth of the ocean; and alfo the fapient "Love, the most ancient, the felf-fufficient; with all the beings which "he produced when he separated one thing from another." Which noble paffage is more directly to Ariftotle's purpose in the first book of his metaphyfics than any of those which he has there quoted, to fhew that the ancient poets and mythologifts agreed with Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the other more fober philofophers, in that natural anticipation and common notion of mankind concerning the neceffity of mind and reafon to account for the connexion, motion, and good order of the world. For, though neither this poem, nor the hymns which pafs under the fame name, are, it fhould feem, the work of the real Orpheus; yet beyond all queftion they are very ancient. The hymns, more particularly, are allowed to be older than the invafion of Greece by Xerxes; and were probably a fett of public and folemn forms of devotion; as appears by a paffage in one of them, which Demofthenes hath almost literally cited in his first oration against Ariftogiton, as the faying of Orpheus, the founder of their most holy myfteries. On this account, they are of higher authority than any other mythological work now extant, the Theogony of Hefiod himself not excepted. The poetry of them is often extremely noble; and the myfterious air which prevails in them, together with its delightful impreffion upon the mind, cannot be better expreffed than in that remarkable description with which they infpired the German editior Efchenbach, when he accidentally met with them at Leipfic: "Thefaurum me reperiffe credidi," fays he, & profecto thefaurum reperi. Incredibile dictu quo me facro hor66 rore "rore afflaverint indigitamenta ifta deorum: nam et tempus ad illorum "lectionem eligere cogebar, quod vel folum horrorem incutere animo "poteft, nocturnum; cum enim totam diem confumferim in contem "plando urbis fplendore, & in adeundis, quibus fcatet urbs illa, viris "doctis; fola nox reftabat, quam Orpheo confecrare potui. In abyf“sum quendam myfteriorum venerandæ antiquitatis defcendere vide"bar, quotiefcunque filente mundo, folis vigilantibus aftris et luna, “μedampáros iftos hymnos ad manus fumfi:” Chaos.] The unformed, undigested mafs of Mofes and Plato; which Milton calls "The womb of nature.” c Love, the fire of Fate.] Fate is the univerfal fyftem of natu ral caufes; the work of the Omnipotent Mind, or of Love: fo Minudius Felix: "Quid aliud eft fatum, quam quod de unoquoque noftrum "deus fatus eft." So alfo Cicero, in The First Book on Divination : "Fatum autem id appello, quod Græci EIPMA PMENHN; id eft, ordinem “ seriemque caufarum, cum caufa caufæ nexa rem ex fe gignat—ex 66 quo intelligitur, ut fatum fit non id quod fuperftitiofe, fed id quod "phyfice dicitur caufa æterna rerum." To the fame purpose is the doctrine of Hierocles, in that excellent fragment concerning Providence and Destiny. As to the three Fates, or Destinies of the poets, they represented that part of the general fyftem of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings; for fo we are told in the hymn addreffed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night (or Love), and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are diftinguished by the epithet of gentle, and tenderhearted. According to Hefiod, Theog. ver. 904, they were the daughers of Jupiter and Themis; but in the Orphic Hymn to Venus, or Love, that Goddess is directly filed the mother of Neceffity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Deftinies, and conducting the whole fyftem of natural causes. A 4 Eldor Born of Fate was Timed, Elder than Chaos. The Born of Fate was Time.] Cronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Cœlum and Tellus. But the author of the hymns gives it quite undisguised by mythological language, and calls him plainly the offspring of the earth and the tarry heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note. e Who many fons devour'd.] The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the diffolution of natural bodies; which are produced and deftroyed by Time. The child of Rea.] Jupiter, fo called by Pindar. Drove him from the upper sky.] That Jupiter dethroned his father Saturn, is recorded by all the mythologists. Phurnutus, or Cornutus, the author of a little Greek treatise on the nature of the gods, informs us, that by Jupiter was meant the vegetable foul of the world, which reftrained and prevented those uncertain alterations which Saturn, or Time, ufed formerly to cause in the mundane system. h Then focial reign'd.] Our mythology here fuppofeth, that before the establishment of the vital, vegetative, plastic nature (reprefented by Jupiter), the four elements were in a variable and unsettled condition; but afterwards well-difpofed and at peace among themfelves. Tethys was the wife of the Ocean; Ops, or Rhea, the Earth; |