Juno's avarice, and Pallas's divers professions are such as the Poets have attri∣buted
to them. But that Invention of the Gods Linnen is Clarimond's; there was
never any Poet could tell us what became of the thread of mens lives. Cupid must
needs be treated as a Child, since the Poets say he was hardly able to draw the cur∣tains
of his mothers bed when she lay with Mars, which is that made Vulcan so
jealous of Mercury, whom the Poets have made a fine example for men to instruct
them in cheats and rogueries; and his discourse to Charon is as like that of a crafty
Mountebank as can be. But where he is troubled that he cannot find some Gods he
was to invite, I cannot omit a fiction of Ariosto's, an Angel, wanting Silence to
bring an Army upon some enterprise without noise, went to look for her in those
places where it is forbidden to speak, as in Monasteries; but there he finds Discord
with her black and gray hair, which seem'd to fight one with another: Her hands
were full of Chancery-Bills and Law-writings, and she had about her an Army of
Councellors and Sollicitors; she sate also President at a Chapter, when the Monks
being on the election of a Prior, divide into such factions, that the Breviaries do
mighty execution on the bald pates. What need had this malicious Poet thus to
abuse the Monks, who are not all naught, and to scandalize a Religion he had be∣fore
defended? But what a simple Angel hath he pitch'd on, that was to seek what
he knew not where to find? 'Tis an abuse of those divine Spirits, and him whose
Agents they are.
Vulcan was the fittest for the Kitchin, as being always neerest the fire. Nor was
Pythagonas less for the sauces, since he was the best acquainted with herbs and
fruits. And what is said of him and the other Philosophers, is home to their
Tenets.
The Raillerie which follows along is obvious, as that of taking down the Signes
by Brontes and Pyragmon, who are Vulcan's Kitchin-boyes; the divers entries of
the Gods: That Aesculapius is Physitian; the Gods had need of one ever since
Homer affirm'd they might be hurt or sick. The Arms of the Gods, may make us
laugh at their Statues.
'Tis Fate makes Terminus eat, that is, what he hath decreed must come to pass,
and 'tis he only hath the key of his padlock. Priapus and Venus are well seated to∣gether.
But that Jupiter should fall so heartily to the Souls, is not without reason,
since some Philosophers have held, that all souls were reunited in the soul of the
world, which they held to be Jupiter. But as the Gods live only on souls and idaa's
so have I seen a Banquet of Poets, and their food was the vowels in a Verse which
are cut off and not pronounc'd.
The drunkenness of the Gods is to be laid on their score, who have furnish'd
them with all other vices.
The scuffle between the Pedees and the Pages about the wing of the soule of a
Turkey, is to shew that those souls had the forms of bodies, and are dispers'd into all
parts of the body to exercise their functions.
As for the Signs of Heaven, I quarrel not with their names, because I have no∣thing
to say to the Astrologers, though they have not the images of those beasts
by whose names they call them. But why should our Poets build their fables on
them, and so fill Heaven with Adulteries and other crimes? Du Bartas and others,
to take away the memory of those villanies, would needs change the fable into a
sacred story, saying the Lyon belongs to Sampson, the Ship to Noa••'s Ark, Taurus
to S. Luke, and Virgo and Via lactea to the Virgin Mary, &c. but they cannot carry
out the humour.
There was no such way to abuse the odd personages which the Poets attribute to
the Gods, as that of the latter band of Gods; and we must never more speak any
otherwise then abusively of them all, as my Author does.
I know I have omitted divers things which deserve to be taken notice of: For
there is not any passage in this Banquet which hath not a secret grace, besides that
it contains the whole story of all the ancient fables, and that digested into a natural
order. Lucian in his Dialogues may have somwhat of this humour, but he is im∣perfect;