study xii. 377 



Certain Philofophers have taken pleafure in 

 painting Man as a God. His attitude, they tell 

 us, is that of command. But, in order to his 



having 



young women were accuftomed to relort, to warn their robes, 

 and where they loved to affemble in, happier days. 



This divine Genius, having appropriated to his heroes a lead- 

 ing paffion of the human heart, and having put it in a&ion in 

 the moft remarkable phafes of human life, has allotted, in like 

 manner, the attributes of God to a variety of Divinities, and 

 has affigned to them the different kingdoms of Nature ; to Nep- 

 tune, the Ocean : to Pluto, the infernal regions ; to Juno, the 

 air ; to Vulcan, the fire ; to Diana, the forefts ; to Pan, the 

 flocks ; in a word, the Nymphs, the Naïads, nay, the very 

 Hours, have all a certain department on the Earth. There is 

 not a tingle flower but what is committed to the fuperintendance 

 of fome Deity. It is thus that he has contrived to render the 

 habitation of Man celeftial. His Work is the moft fublime of 

 Encyclopedias. All the characters of it are fo exactly in the hu- 

 man heart, and in Nature, that the names by which he has de- 

 signed them have become immortal. Add to the majefiy of his 

 plans a truth of expreffion, which is not to be afcribed alone to 

 the beauty of his language, as certain Grammarians pretend, but 

 to the vaft extent of his obfervation of Nature. It is thus, for 

 example, that he calls the Sea impurpled, at the moment that the 

 Sun is fetting ; becaufe that then the reflexes of the Sun in the 

 Horizon render it of that colour, as I myfelf have frequently re- 

 marked. Virgil, who has imitated him clofely, abounds in thefe 

 beauties of obfervation, to which Commentators pay very little, 

 if any, attention. In the Georgics, lor inftance, Virgil gives to 

 the Spring the epithet of blujblng ; vere nibenti, fays he. As his 

 Tranflators and Commentators have taken no pains to convey 

 this, any more than a multitude of fimilar touches, I was long 



impreffed 



