Pinakidia [pp. 573-582]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
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Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian
Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola.
Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted w ith the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina,
Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be
one and the same.
Servius on Virgil's 2Eneid speaks of a bearded Venus.
The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the Mfother of the Gods.
In Suidas is a letter fiom Dionysius, the Areopagite,
dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion) to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the
sun at noon. "Either," says Dionysius "the author of
nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do."
The most particular history of the Deluge, and the
nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be
found int Lucian (De Dea Syria.)
The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.
So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the
epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535
years, for according to
Syncellus, she lived before Christ 2177,
Patavius,'''' 2060,
Helvicus,'''' 224S,
Eusebius,'''' 1984,
Mr. Jackson'''' 1964,
Archbishop Usher,'' 1215,
Philo-Biblius from Sanconiathon, 1200,
Herodotus about''' 713.
The book ofJasher, said to have been preserved from
the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the
time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant
thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone
were the first wvritten characters. The book of Jasher
is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.
Andr6e Chenier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation,
Peut-htre avant que l'heure en cercle promenee
Ait pose sur I'email brillant
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornoe
Son pied sonore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere
At this instant Andre Cheiiier was interrupted by the
officials of the guillotine.
Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said
to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very
remote date, detected several entire passages purloined
fromnt his own writings.
origine, Dresde. 1768." In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated,
rises very quietly, takes his head under his arni and
walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.
The idea of "No light but rather darkness visible"
was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's
A little glooming light much like a shade.
In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy "The Deliverance of
the Children of Israel" one of the principal characters
is the Divinity himself.
Darwin is indebted for a great part of his "Great
poem" to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727
and entitled "Connubia Florum."
Mr. Bryant in his learned "Mythology" says that
although the Pagan fables are not believe(, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from
them as existing realities.
The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been
copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in
Egypt. WVhat he describes on the central part of the
shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenw is said to have prophecied
that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake
of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be
seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1.) It
amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the
sun.
The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand
years mute and incapable of utterance. The "Masore
tical punctuation" which professes to supply the vowels
was formed a thousand years after the language had
ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances
with the Seventy, Origen and other writers.
James Montgomery thinks proper to style M'Pherson's Ossian, a collection "of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs."
The paucity of spondees in the English language, is
the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of
Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:
So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace:
Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;
But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.
His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness,
is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost,
wherein a person is personified.
It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme:
the terminations of the lines where they arc most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.
An extract from the "Mystery of St. Denis" is in Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a
the "Bibliotheque dt Theatre Francois, depuis son marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua.
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