Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

172 WIT.
the Greek mythology. Of all the allusions which the following
passage contains, there is not one, taken singly, of very extraordinary merit; and yet the effect of the whole is uncommonly
great, from the singular power of combination, which so long
and so difficult an exertion discovers.
"Wise Phidias thus, his skill to prove,
Thro' many a god advanced to Jove,
And taught the polish'd rocks to shine
With airs and lineaments divine,
Till Greece amaz'd and half afraid,
Th' assembled Deities survey'd.
Great Pan, who wont to chase the fair,
And lov'd the spreading oak, was there;
Old Saturn, too, with up-cast eyes,
Beheld his abdicated skies;
And mighty Mars, for war renown'd,
In adam antine armor frown'd;
By him the childless Goddess rose,
Minerva, studious to compose
Her twisted threads; the web she strung,
And o'er a loom of marhble hung;
Thetis, the troubled ocean's queen,
Match'd with a mortal next was seen,
Reclining on a funeral urn,
Her short-liv'd darling son to mourn;
The last was he, whose thunder slew
The Titan race, a rebel crew,
That from a hundred hills ally'd,
In impious league their King defy'd.*
According to the view which I have given of the nature of
wit, the pleasure we derive from that assemblage of ideas which
* [As this parallel between English history and Grecian mythology may
not be as clear and intelligible to American as to English pupils, and as
some of the comparisons, in spite of Stewart's commendation of them,
may even appear dull and far-fetched, a few words of commentary may
not seem useless. " Great Pan" stands for Charles II., who once escaped
his pursuers by ensconcing himself in an oak tree, and whose loves were
more numerous than select. James II., who feebly lost a throne which,
in the gentle but lying phrase of the day, he was said to have " abdicated,"
is here likened to Saturn. "M fighty Mars" is William of Orange, "re