C 23 ] 
wage war again with Jupiter. The natural hifta- 
rians may perhaps reafonably fay, that the wife 
poets meant no more by giants, than exhalations, 
ihut up in the bowels of the earth, which, not 
finding a free pafiage, open one by their own force 
and impulfe, and form mountains, as thofe which 
occafioned this eruption have been leen to doj 
and me thought I faw thofe torrents of burning 
fmoke that Pindar deferibes in an eruption of Etna, 
now called mon Gibello in Sicily, in imitation of 
which, as fome fay, Virgil wrote thefe lines : 
“ Ipfe fed horrificis jiixt a tofjat Mtna rulnis, &c. 
“ After the ftones and afhes with clouds of thick 
fmoke had been fent up, by the impulfe of the 
fire and windy exhalation (as you fee in a great 
cauldron that boils), into the middle region of the 
air, overcome by their own natural weight, when 
from diflance the flrength they had received from 
impulfe was fpent, rejected likewife by the cold 
and unfriendly region, you faw them fall thick, 
and by degrees, the condenfed fmoke clear away, 
raining afhes with water and (tones of different 
fizes, according to the difhance from the place: 
then by degrees with the fame noife and fmoke it 
threw out (tones and allies again, and fo on by 
fits. This continued two days and nights, when 
the fmoke and force of the lire began to abate. 
The fourth day, which wasThurfday at 22 o’clock, 
there was fo great an eruption, that, as 1 was in 
the gulph of Puzzole coming from ifehia, and 
not far from Mifenum, I faw, in a Ihort time, 
‘‘ majiv 
