then in its infancy, and demanded from its ms'tfuctors such 

 treatment as children receive from their nurses." We are not 

 to imagine, that these expressions of the Greek writer are 

 necessafi'lj confined to moral philosophy, tliough the nature 

 of the subject, of which he is treating in that dissertation, 

 prevents him from extending the observation, for (as Mr, 

 Twining * remarks) the earliest philosophy was natural phi- 

 losophy, and the earliest vehicle of that philosophy was 

 verse. ' Oipheus, Hesiod, Parnlenides, Empedocles, and 

 Thalesj.kte all mentioned by Plutarch as poet-philosophers 

 of this kind, and Pythagoras is isaid to have written a poem 

 on the Universe in Hexameters." Bui to return toTyrius — 

 •f- *' When at length (says he) reason had encreased in strength 

 and approached to the maturity of manly understanding, 

 it became filled with incredulity and suspicion, too judicious 

 to admit the fables without investigation, or approve of the 

 obscurity in which their signification was involved; then it 

 was that philosophy was divested of her former decorations; 

 the pompous train of poetic imagery was dismissed, and the 

 mystic veil of allegory removed from before her." Yet, 

 though they tluis became separate, they were still S3'mpa- 

 thetic existences, they flourished not, but in association, 

 they appeared uiuted in one common fate and governed by 



* Comnienfary on Aristotle's Poetics. 



