104 Oji the Machinery of the 



-fonn from the«ingenuity of some of the modem 

 devotees to. the ancient poetry; and in the 

 celestial actors, of whom the Epopoea and the 

 Drama of the ancients makes such important 

 use, we are not to contemplate real personages, 

 but allegorical representations, in which alle- 

 gorical interpretation every thing debased and 

 low is excluded, and, adopting this idea, we 

 are directed to contemplate a dignity in those 

 actors, which as persons they are totally des- 

 titute of. 



This allegorising of the heathen pantheon 

 owed its origin to the impotent attempt of 

 some pagan philosophers, of the later Platonic 

 School, with a view to rescue paganism from 

 the reproach of its rude and gross theology, 

 which in its popular acceptation could not look 

 Christianity in the face. Christian philosophers 

 have taken the lesson from them, and the 

 fine-spun theory which the former invented 

 from a zeal for the sinking cause of the heathen 

 religion, the latter adopted from an equal zeal 

 for the honour of heathen poetry. What in the 

 name of religion the better sense of mankind 

 turned from with disgust, it was feared that 

 their better taste would be equally disgusted 

 with in the representations of the poets of 

 Greece and Rome. The gods, as gods of an- 

 tiquity, might fall into contempt and oblivion, 



