Natural Hi/lory of the Ancients. 233 



reflection will mew to a believer in revelation that 

 the Greeks often fpake of things higher than they 

 knew when they difcourfed of mythical animals 

 and events. Thefe ftories are many of them waifs 

 and flrays which have floated down the ftream of 

 time from the original home of the human race. 

 They are part of the fairy-tales told in the nurfery 

 of man during the infancy of the world, drawn by 

 the Greeks and Romans from " the common ftock 

 of ancient tradition, and varied but in point of 

 embellishment, which is their own. And this 

 principally raifes my efteem of thefe fables ; which 

 I receive, not as the product of the age or inven- 

 tion of the poets, but as facred relics, gentle 

 whifpers, and the breath of better times, that 

 from the traditions of more ancient nations came 

 at length into the flutes and trumpets of the 

 Greeks." 1 In purfuance of this view, Lord 

 Bacon explains Typhon to mean a rebel ; Proteus, 

 matter ; the Sphinx, fcience ; the Sirens, pleafures ; 

 and Scylla and Charybdis, the middle way ; and fo 

 forth. The Cyclopes again, fo poetically defcribed 

 by Virgil : 



" Centum alii curva haec habitant at littora vulgo 

 Infandi Cyclopes, et altis montibus errant ;" 



and again : 



" Cernimus adftantes necquidquam lumine torvo 

 JEtnaeos fratres, .... concilium horrendum," 



become, in his view, minifters of terror affifting a 

 defpotifm. The poets, however, do not feem to 



1 Bacon's "Wifdom of the Ancients," Preface. 



