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 clownishi 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 a 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. P 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. Pan (as his name imports) represents and lays open the all of things or nature. Concerning his original there are two only opinions that go for current; for either he came of Mercury, that is, the word of God, which the holy Scriptures without all controversy affirm, and such of the philosophers as had any smack of divinity assented unto, or else from the confused seeds of things. For they that would have one simple beginning refer it unto God or if a materiate beginning, they would have it various in power. So that we may end the controversy with this distribution, that the world took beginning either from Mercury or from the seeds of all things. Virg. Eclog. 6. Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta For rich-vein'd Orpheus sweetly did rehearse But as touching the third conceit of Pan's original, it seems that the Grecians (either by intercourse with the Egyptians, or one way or other) had heard something of the Hebrew mysteries; for it points to the state of the world, not considered in immediate creation, but after the fall of Adam, exposed and made subject to death aud corruption; for in that state it was, and remains to this day, the offspring of God and sin. And therefore all these three narrations concerning the manner of Pan's birth may seem to be true, if it be rightly distinguished between things and times. For this Pan or Nature (which we suspect, contemplate, and reverence more than is fit) took beginning from the word of God by the means of confused matter, and the entrance of prevarication and corruption. The Destinies may well be thought the sisters of Pan or Nature, because the beginnings and continuances, and corruptions, and depres sions, and dissolutions. and eminences, and labours, and felicities of things, and all the chances which can happen unto anything are linked with the chain of causes natural. Horns are attributed unto him because horns are broad at the root and sharp at the ends, the nature of all things being like a pyramis, sharp at the top. For individual or singular things being infinite are first collected into species, which are many also; then from species into generals, and from generals (by ascending) are contracted into things or notions more general, so that at length Nature may seem to be contracted into a unity. Neither is it to be wondered at that Pan toucheth heaven with his horns, seeing the height of nature or universal ideas do in some sort pertain to things divine, and there is a ready and short passage from metaphysic to natural theology. The body of nature is elegantly and with deep judgment depainted hairy, representing the beams or operations of creatures; for beams are as it were the hairs and bristles of Nature, and every creature is either more or less beamy, which is most apparent in the faculty of seeing, and no less in every virtue and operation that effectuates upon a distant object; for whatsoever works up anything afar off, that may rightly be said to dart forth rays or beams. Moreover Pan's beard is said to be exceeding long, because the beams or influences of celestial bodies do operate and pierce farthest of all, and the sun (when his higher half is shadowed with a cloud) his beams break out in the lower and looks as if he were bearded. Nature is also excellently set forth with a biformed body, with respect to the differences between superior and inferior creatures. For the one part, by reason of their pulcritude and equability of motion, and constancy, and dominion over the earth and earthly things, is worthily set out by the shape of man; and the other part in respect of their perturbations and unconstant motions, and therefore needing to be moderated b the celestial, may be well fitted with the figure of a brute beast. This description of his body pertains also to the participation of species, for no natural being seems to be simple, but as it were participating and compounded of two. As for example; man hath something of a beast, a beast something of a plant, a plant something of an inanimate body; so that all natural things are in very deed biformed, that is to say, compounded of a superior and inferior species. It is a witty allegory, that same of the feet of a goat, by reason of the upward tending motion of terrestial bodies towards the air and heaven, for the goat is a climbing creature that loves to be hanging about the rocks and steep mountains. And this is done also in a wonderful manner, even by those things which |