NOTES 



TO THE ^ 



INTRODUCTION, 



P. 191.1. 16. A doubt has been suggested, whether 

 there be any authority for supposing that Venus was 

 considered by the ancients as the goddess of beauty; 

 or whether beauty was considered by them as a 

 positive quality, of which there could be an abstract 

 personification. It is very possible that there may 

 be no passage in which Venus is directly men- 

 tioned as the goddess of beauty; but, I may safely 

 assert that no figurative genealogy was ever more 

 plain and obvious, than that love is the offspring 

 of beauty ; and, therefore, the mother of love, 

 whose attendants are the graces, must virtually 

 be considered as beauty personified and deified. 

 The judgment of Paris, notwithstanding the charge 

 of bribery in the judge, is strongly in favour of 

 her superiority over the other goddesses in point 

 ©f beauty ; and vi e find in the poets, that women 

 are compared to Venus for beauty, as they are 



