these originals. But if with attention we consider the matter, it will appear that they were delivered and related as things formerly believed and received, and not as newly invented and offered unto us. Besides, seeing they are diversely related by writers that lived near about one and the self-same time, we may easily perceive that they were common things, derived from precedent memorials, and that they became various by reason of the divers ornaments bestowed on them by particular relations. And the consideration of this must needs increase in us a great opinion of them as not to be accounted either the effects of the times or inventions of the poets, but as sacred reliques or abstracted airs of better times, which by tradition from more ancient nations fell into the trumpets and flutes of the Grecians....

If, however, any will obstinately deny all this, leaving them to enjoy the gravity of judgment which they affect, -"although indeed it be but lumpish and almost leaden "—he will present the matter to them in another way :

There is found among men (and it goes for current) a twofold use of parables. and those (which is more to be admired) referred to contrary ends, conducing as well to the folding up and keeping of things under a vail, as to the enlightening and laying open of obscurities. But omitting the former (rather than to undergo wrangling, and assuming ancient fables as things vagrant and composed only for delight), the latter must questionless still remain as not to be wrested from us by any violence of wit, neither can any (that is but meanly learned) hinder, but it must absolutely be received as a thing grave and sober, free from all vanity, and exceeding profitable and necessary to all sciences. This is it, I say, that leads the understanding of man by an easy and gentle passage through all novel and abstruse inventions which any way differ from common received opinions. Therefore in the first ages (when many human inventions and conclusions, which are now common and vulgar, were new and not generally known), all things were full of fables, enigmas, parables, and similes of all sorts, by which they sought to teach and lay open, not to hide and conceal knowledge, especially seeing the understandings of men were in those times rude and impatient, and almost incapable of any subtilties, such things only excepted as were the objects

of sense for as hieroglyphics preceded letters, so parables were more ancient than arguments. And in these days also, he that would illuminate men's minds anew in any old matter, and that not with disprofit and harshness, must absolutely take the same course and use the help of similes. . . .

There is perhaps no work of Bacon's that impresses one so forcibly with admiration of the ingenuity, freshness, and vital energy of his intellect as this treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients. Nothing in his interpretation of the old fables is borrowed or common-place; every thing is new and his own. Yet it seems all as natural as if no other explanation were possible, and in some instances as if the only wonder were that it should not have been all along perceived by every body. So exquisite is the art of the exposition. And very note-worthy, too, it is how these original views of Bacon's, with all this ready acceptance or accordance which they command, have never yet become vulgar or trite. They have been promulgated for more than two centuries, mixed up during all that time with the general mass of thought; yet there they still lie as bright and distinguishable as at first, like the crystals imbedded in common clay or gravel. Their originality has preserved them in their integrity, like a powerful salt. Or, they are of too marked a character to admit of their being taken up by any one who chooses, and becoming common property. The king's broad arrow is stamped too deep upon them; the master mind that first gave them forth has put too much of itself into them--has too livingly shaped, coloured, inspired them all over and through and through.

The fables, or mythological legends, interpreted amount to the number of thirty-one. We must, however, confine our review to a very few of the more remarkable expositions, which we shall give entire, or nearly entire; for none of them will bear abridg

ment.

We will begin with that of the story of Typhon, to which an allusion has already been made in the Preface:

Juno being vexed (say the poets) that Jupiter had begotten

Pallas by himself without her, earnestly pressed all the other gods and goddesses that she might also bring forth of herself alone without him; and having by violence and importunity obtained a grant thereof, she smote the earth, and forthwith sprang up Typhon a huge and horrid monster. This strange birth she commits to a serpent (as a foster-father) to nourish it; who no sooner came to ripeness of years but he provokes Jupiter to battle. In the conflict the giant getting the upper hand, takes Jupiter upon his shoulders, carries him into a remote and obscure country, and (cutting out the sinews of his hands and feet) brought them away, and so left him miserably mangled and maimed. But Mercury recovering these nerves from Typhon by stealth, restored them again to Jupiter. Jupiter being again by this means corroborated, assaults the monster afresh, and at the first strikes him with a thunder-bolt, from whose blood serpents were engendered. This monster at length fainting and flying, Jupiter casts on him the mount Etna and with the weight thereof crushed him.

This fable seems to point at the variable fortune of princes, and the rebellious insurrection of traitors in a state. For princes may well be said to be married to their dominions, as Jupiter was to Juno; but it happens now and then, that being deboshed by the long custom of empyring and bending towards tyranny, they endeavour to draw all to themselves, and, contemning the counsel of their nobles and senators, hatched laws in their own brain, that is, dispose of things by their own fancy and absolute power. The people (repining at this) study how to create and set up a chief of their own choice. This project, by the secret instigation of the peers and nobles, doth for the most part take his beginning, by whose connivance the commons being set on edge, there follows a kind of murmuring or discontent in the state, shadowed by the infancy of Typhon, which being nursed by the natural pravity and clownish malignity of the vulgar sort (unto princes as infestious as serpents), is again repaired by renewed strength, and at last breaks out into open rebellion, which, because it brings infinite mischiefs upon prince and people, is represented by the monstrous deformity of Typhon: his hundred heads signify their divided powers; his fiery mouths their inflamed intents; his serpentine circles their pestilent malice in besieging; his iron hands their merciless slaughters; his eagle's talents their greedy rapines; his plumed body their continual rumours and scouts and fears, and such like. And sometimes these rebellions grow so potent that princes are enforced (transported as it were by the rebels,

and forsaking the chief seats and cities of the kingdom) to contract their power, and being deprived of the sinews of money and majesty, betake themselves to some remote and obscure corner within their dominions. But in process of time, if they bear their misfortunes with moderation, they may recover their strength by the virtue and industry of Mercury, that is, they may (by becoming affable and by reconciling the minds and wills of their subjects with grave edicts and gracious speech) excite an alacrity to grant aids and subsidies whereby to strengthen their authority anew. Nevertheless having learned

to be wise and wary, they will refrain to try the chance of fortune by war, and yet study how to suppress the reputation of the rebels by some famous action, which if it fall out answerable to their expectation, the rebels finding themselves weakened, and fearing the success of their broken projects, betake themselves to some slight and vain bravadoes like the hissing of serpents, and at length in despair betake themselves to flight, and then when they begin to break, it is safe and timely for kings to pursue and oppress them with the forces and weight of the kingdom as it were with the mountain Ætna.

Perhaps there is no one of these interpretations that is upon the whole so admirable as that entitled "Pan, or Nature: and it is further recommended to special attention as having been selected by Bacon himself to be one of his examples when treating of this method of recovering the lost wisdom of the old world in the second book of his work De Augmentis Scientiarum, and there inserted with some additions and other alterations. The original of Pan, he begins by observing, under whose person the ancients have exquisitely described Nature, has been left by them doubtful; some accounts making him to have been the son of Mercury, others the offspring of Penelope and all her suitors, while others say that he was the son of Jupiter and Hybris, which signifies contumely or disdain. In all the accounts, however, it is admitted that the Parcæ, or Destinies, were his sisters.

He is pourtrayed by the ancients in this guise; on his head a pair of horns that reach to heaven, his body rough and hairy, his beard long and shaggy, his shape biformed above like

man, below like a beast, his feet like goat's hoofs, bearing these ensigns of his jurisdiction, to wit, in his left hand a pipe of seven reeds, and in his right a sheep-hook or a staff crooked at the upper eud, and his mantle made of a leopard's skin. His dignities and offices were these: he was the god of hunters, of shepherds, and of all rural inhabitants; chief president also of hills and mountains, and next to Mercury the ambassador of the gods. Moreover he was accounted the leader and commander of the nymphs, which were always wont to dance the rounds and frisk about him; he was accosted by the Satyrs and the old Sileni. He had power also to strike men with terrors, and those especially vain and superstitious, which are termed panic. fears. His acts were not many for ought that can be found in records, the chiefest was, that he challenged Cupid at wrestling, in which conflict he had the foil. The tale goes too, how that he caught the giant Typhon in a net and held him fast. Moreover when Ceres, grumbling and chafing that Proserpina was ravished, had hid herself away, and that all the gods took pains (by dispersing themselves into every corner) to find her out, it was only his good hap (as he was hunting) to light on her, and acquaint the rest where she was. He presumed also to put it to the trial who was the best musician, he or Apollo; and by the judgment of Midas was indeed preferred. But the wise judge had a pair of ass's ears privily chopped to his noddle for his sentence.

Little or nothing, it is added, is reported of his amours.. We are only told that he loved the nymph Echo, whom he took to wife; and that Cupid, whom he had irritated by audaciously challenging him to a wrestling-match, in his spite and revenge, inflamed him with a passion for another pretty wench called Syrinx. Moreover he had no issue; only he was the reputed father of a little girl called Iambe,* that with many pretty tales was wont to make strangers merry. Some, however, think that Iambe was really his daughter by his wife Echo.

This (if any be) is a noble tale, as being laid out and bigbellied with the secrets and mysteries of nature.

Carelessly misprinted Iamle in all, or almost all, the editions of the English translation by Gorges, Mr. Montagu's. included.