Ode XIII.] In the year 1751, appeared a very splendid edition, in quarto, of "Memoires pour servir à l' Histoire de la Maison de Brandebourg, à Berlin et à la Haye;" with a privilege signed FREDERIC; the same being engraved in imitation of hand-writing. In this edition, among other extraordinary passages, are the two following, to which the third stanza of this ode more particularly refers: as of some other illustrious men, that at his birth a swarm of bees lighted on his lips, and fed him with their honey. It was also a tradition concerning him, that Pan was heard to recite his poetry, and seen dancing to one of his hymns on the mountains near Thebes. But a real historical fact in his life is, that the Thebans imposed a large fine upon him, on account of the veneration which he expressed in his poems for that heroic spirit, shown by the people of Athens in defence of the common "Il se fit une migration" (the author is speakliberty, which his own fellow-citizens had shame- ing of what happened of the revocation of the edict fully betrayed. And as the argument of this ode of Nantes) "dont on n'avoit guere vu d'exemples implics, that great poetical talents, and high senti- dans l'histoire: un peuple entier sortit du royaume ments of liberty, do reciprocally produce and assist par l'esprit de parti en haine du pape, et pour reeach other, so Pindar is perhaps the most exemplary | cevoir sous un autre ciel la communion sous les proof of this connection, which occurs in history. denx especes: quatre cens inille ames s'expatrieThe Thebans were remarkable, in general, for a rent ainsi et abandonnerent tous leur biens pour slavish disposition through all the fortunes of their detonner dans d'autres temples les vieux pseaumes commonwealth; at the time of its ruin by Philip; de Clement Marot." P. 165. and even in its best state, under the administration of Pelopidas and 'Epaminondas: and every one knows, they were no less remarkable for great dulness, and want of all genius. That Pindar should have equally distinguished himself from the rest of his fellow-citizens in both these respects seems somewhat extraordinary, and is scarce to be accounted for but by the preceding observation. Stanza III. Line 28.] Alluding to his "Defence of the People of England" against Salmasius. See particularly the manner in which he himself speaks of that undertaking, in the introduction to his reply to Morus. Stanza IV. Line 35.] Edward the Third; from whom descended Henry Hastings, third earl of Huntingdon, by the daughter of the duke of Clarence, brother to Edward the Fourth. Stanza V. Line 36.] At Whittington, a village on the edge of Scarsdale in Derbyshire, the earls of Devonshire and Danby, with the lord Delamere, privately concerted the plan of the Revolution. The house in which they met is at present a farinhouse; and the country people distinguish the room where they sat, by the name of "the plotting parlour." Book II. Ode VII, Stanza II. Line 5.] Mr. Locke died in 1704, when Mr. Hoadly was beginning to distinguish himself in the cause of civil and religious liberty: lord Godolphin in 1712, when the doctrines of the Jacobite faction were chiefly favoured by those in power: lord Somers in 1716, amid the practices of the non-juring clergy against the protestant establishment; and lord Stanhope in 1721, during the controversy with the lower house of convocation. Ode X. Stanza V.] During Mr. Pope's war with Theobald, Concanen, and the rest of their tribe, Mr. Warburton, the present lord bishop of Gloucester, did with great zeal cultivate their friendship; having been introduced, forsooth, at the meetings of that respectable confederacy: a favour which he afterwards spoke of in very high terms of complacency and thankfulness. At the same time, in his intercourse with them, he treated Mr. Pope in a most contemptuous manner, and as a writer without genius. Of the truth of these assertions his lordship can have no doubt, if he recollects his own correspondence with Concanen; a part of which is still in being, and will probably be remembered as long as any of this prelate's writings. "La crainte donna le jour à la credulité, et l'amour propre interessa bientôt le ciel au destin des hommes." P. 242, HYMN TO THE NAIADS. THE ARGUMENT, THE nymphs, who preside over springs and rivulets, are addressed at day-break, in honour of their several functions, and of the relations which they bear to the natural and to the moral world. Their origin is deduced from the first allegorical deities, or powers of Nature; according to the doctrine of the old mythological poets, concerning the generation of the gods and the rise of things. They are then successively considered, as giving motion to the air and exciting summerbreezes; as nourishing and beautifying the vegetable creation; as contributing to the fullness of navigable rivers, and consequently to the maintenance of commerce; and by that means, to the maritime part of military power. Next is represented their favourable influence upon health, when assisted by rural exercise: which introduces their connection with the art of physic, and the happy effects of mineral medicinal springs. Lastly, they are celebrated for the friendship which the Muses bear them, and for the true inspiration which temperance only can receive: in opposition to the enthusiasm of the more licentious poets. O'ER yonder eastern hill the twilight pale 19 Too far into the splendid hours of morn 29 And tuneful Aganippe; that sweet name, 50 Owns; and your aid beseecheth. When the might Ascend the cheerful breezes: hail'd of bards And o'er the vale of Richmond, where with Thames Ye love to wander, Amalthea pours 90 99 Well-pleas'd the wealth of that Ammonian horn, 120 Such are the words of Hermes: such the praise, 60 Relieve the wants of nature, Jove repays 70 You too, O Nymphs, and your unenvious aid The rural powers confess; and still prepare For you their choicest treasures. Pan commands, Oft as the Delian king with Sirius holds The central beavens, the father of the grove Commands his Dryads over your abodes To spread their deepest umbrage. Well the god Remembereth how indulgent ye supplied Your general dews to nurse them in their prime. Pales, the pasture's queen, where'er ye stray, Pursues your steps, delighted; and the path With living verdure clothes. Around your haunts The laughing Chloris, with profuseth hand, Throws wide her blooms, her odours. Still with you Pomona seeks to dwell: and o'er the lawns, 81 150 With noble wealth, and his own seat on Earth, The Persian's promis'd glory, when the realms Of Indus and the soft Jonian clime, 160 When Libya's torrid champain and the rocks 170 Cool ease and welcome slumbers have becalm'd 198 211 For not estrang'd from your benignant arts Is he, the god, to whose mysterious shrine My youth was sacred, and my votive cares Belong; the learned Pæon. Oft when all His cordial treasures he hath search'd in vain; When herbs, and potent trees, and drops of balm Rich with the genial influence of the Sun, (To ronse dark Fancy from her plaintive dreams, To brace the nerveless arm, with food to win Sick appetite, or hush the unquiet breast Which pines with silent passion) he in vain Hath prov'd; to your deep mansions he descends, Your gates of humid rock, your dim arcades, He entereth; where empurpled veins of ore Gleam on the roof; where through the rigid mine Your trickling rills insinuate. There the god 220 From your indulgent hands the streaming bowl Wafts to his pale-ey'd suppliants; wafts the seeds Wash'd from the pregnant glebe. They drink: and 230 When Python fell. And, O propitious Nymphs, My lyre shall pay your bounty. Scorn not ye That humble tribute. Though a mortal hand Excite the strings to utterance, yet for themes Not unregarded of celestial powers, 250 I frame their language; and the Muses deign 240 260 270 Of evils, with immortal rest from cares: Looks down on all that live; and whatsoe'er 290 300 Of Thrace, the Satyrs, and the unruly Fauns, 321 pheus, where he is called Protogonos, or the firstbegotten, is said to have been born of an egg, and is represented as the principal or origin of all these external appearances of Nature. In the fragments of Orpheus, collected by Henry Stephens, he is named Phanes, the discoverer or discloser; who unfolded the ideas of the supreme intelligence, and exposed them to the perception of inferior beings in this visible frame of the world; as Macrobius, and Proclus, and Athenagoras, all agree to interpret the several passages of Orpheus, which they have preserved. But the Love designed in our text, is the one selfexistent 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 510 differ from them in this particular; though, in other respects, he professeth 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 dissent 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 of the old Argonautic poem, ascribed to Orpheus, it is said, that Love, whom mortals in latter 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 Indigitamenta, or Orphic Hymns, is said to be the same with Cypris, or Love itself. Moreover, in the body of this Argonautic poem, where the personated Orpheus introduceth himself singing to his lyre in reply to Chiron, he celebrateth "the obscure memory of Chaos, and the natures which it contained within itself in a state of perpetual vicissitude; how the Heaven had its boundary determined; the generation of the Earth; the depth of the ocean; and also the sapient Love, the most ancient, the selfsufficient; with all the beings which he produced when he separated one thing from another." Which VER. 25. noble passage is more directly to Aristotle's purElder than Chaos.] Hesiod, in his The- pose in the first book of his metaphysics than any egony, gives a different account, and make Chaos of those which he has there quoted, to show that the eldest of beings; though he assigns to Love the ancient poets and mythologists agreed with neither father nor superior: which circumstance is Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the other more sober particularly mentioned by Phædrus, in Plato's Ban-philosophers, in that natural anticipation and comquet, as being observable not only in Hesiod, but mon notion of mankind concerning the necessity of in all other writers both of verse and prose: and mind and reason to account for the connection, on the same occasion he cites a line from Parme-motion, and good order of the world. For, though nides, in which Love is expressly styled the eldest neither this poem, nor the hymns which pass under of all the gods. Yet Aristophanes, in The Birds, the same name, are, it should seem, the work of affirms, that "Chaos, and Night, and Erebus, and the real Orpheus; yet beyond all question they are Tartarus, were first; and that Love was produced very ancient. The hymns, more particularly, are from an egg, which the sable-winged Night depo- allowed to be older than the invasion of Greece by sited in the immense bosom of Erebus." But it Xerxes; and were probably a set of public and somust be observed, that the Love designed by this lemn forms of devotion: as appears by a passage comic poet was always distinguished from the in one of them, which Demosthenes hath almost other, from that original and self-existent being literally cited in his first oration against Aristogithe TO ON or ARAGON of Plato, and meant only ton, as the saying of Orpheus, the founder of their the AHMIOTPгos or second person of the old most holy mysteries. On this account, they are Grecian trinity; to whom is inscribed an hymn of higher authority than any other mythological among those which pass under the name of Or- work now extant, the Theogony of Hesiod himself NOTES ON THE HYMN TO THE NAIADS. Love not excepted. The poetry of them is often extremely noble; and the mysterious air which prevails in them, together with its delightful impression upon the mind, cannot be better expressed than in that remarkable description with which they inspired the German editor Eschenbach, when he accidentally met with them at Leipsic: "Thesaurum me reperisse credidi," says he, "et profecto thesaurum reperi. Incredibile dictu quo me sacro horrore afflaverint indigitamenta ista deorum: nam et tempus ad illorum lectionem eligere cogebar, quod vel solum horrorem incutere animo potest, nocturnum; cum enim totam diem cousumserim in contemplando urbis splendore, et in adeundis, quibus scatet urbs illa, viris doctis; sola nox restabat, quam Orpheo consecrare potui. In abyssum quendam mysteriorum venerandæ antiquitatis descendere videbar, quotiescunque silente mundo, solis vigilantibus astris et luna μhampúra istos hymnos ad manus sumsi." Ver. 25. Chaos.] The unformed, undigested mass of Moses and Plato: which Milton calls "The womb of Nature." Ib. Love, the sire of Fate.] Fate is the universal system of natural causes; the work of the Omnipotent Mind, or of Love; so Minucius Felix: “Quid aliud est fatum, quam quod de unoquoque nostrum deus fatus est." So also Cicero, in the first book on Divination: "Fatum autem id appello, quod Græci EIPMAPMENHN; id est, ordinem seriemque causarum, cum causa causæ nexa rem ex se gignat -ex quo intelligitur, ut fatum sit non id quod superstitiose, sed id quod physice dicitur causa æterna rerum." To the same 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 system of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings: for so we are told in the hymn addressed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night, (or Love) and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are distinguished by the epithets of gentle, and tender-hearted. According to Hesiod, Theog. ver. 904, they were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis; but in the Orphic Hymn to Venus, or Love, that goddess is directly styled the mother of Necessity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Destinies, and conducting the whole system of natural causes. Ver. 26. Born of Fate was Time.] Cronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Coelum 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 starry Heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note. Ver. 27. Who many sons Devour'd.] The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the dissolution of natural bodies; which are produced and destroyed by Time. Ver. 28. the child Of Rhea.] Jupiter, so called by Pindar. Ver. 29. 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 soul of the world, which restrained and prevented those uncertain alterations which Saturn, or Time, used formerly to cause in the mundane system. Ver. 30. Then social reign'd.] Our mythology here supposeth, that before establishment of the vital, vegetative, plastic nature, (represented by Jupiter) the four elements were in a variable and unsettled condition; but afterwards, well-disposed and at peace among themselves. Tethys was the wife of the Ocean; Ops, or Rhea, the Earth; Vesta, the eldest daughter of Saturn, Fire; and the cloud-compeller, or Zùs vepayiçiʊng, the Air: though he also represented the plastic principle of Nature, as may be seen in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him. Ver. 34. ...... the sedgy-crowned race.] The rivergods; who, acccording to Hesiod's Theogony, were the sons of Oceanus and Tethys. Ver. 36. from them, Are ye, O Naiads.] The descent of the Naiads is less certain than most points of the Greek mythology. Homer, Odyss. xiii. xeça Atós. Virgil, in the eighth book of the Æneid, speaks as if the Nymphs, or Naiads, were the parents of the rivers: but in this he contradicts the testimony of Hesiod, and evidently departs from the orthodox system, which representeth several nymphs as retaining to every single river. On the other hand, Calimachus, who was very learned in all the school-divinity of those times, in his hymn to Delos, maketh Penus, the great Thessalian river-god, the father of his Nymphs: and Ovid, in the fourteenth book of his Metamorphosis, mentions the Naiads of Latium as the immediate daughters of the neighbouring rivergods. Accordingly, the Naiads of particular rivers are occasionally, both by Ovid and Statius, called by a patronymic, from the name of the river to which they belong. Ver. 40. ......... Syrian Daphne.] The grove of Daphne in Syria, near Antioch, was famous for its delightful fountains. Ib........ tribes Ver. 46. Hyperion.] A son of Cœlum and Tellus, and father of the Sun, who is thence called, by Pindar, Hyperionides. But Hyperion is put by Homer in the same manner as here, for the Sun himself. Ver. 49. Your sallying streams.] The state of the atmosphere with respect to rest and motion is, in several ways, affected by rivers and running streams; and that more especially in hot seasons: first, they destroy its equilibrium, by cooling those parts of it with which they are in contact; and secondly, they communicate their own motion: and the air which is thus moved by them, being left heated, is of consequence more elastic than other parts of the atmosphere, and therefore fitter to preserve and to propagate that motion. Ver. 70. Delian king.] One of the epithets of Apollo, or the Sun, in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him. Ver. 79. Chloris.] The ancient Greek name for Flora. |