Keeping the tablets and decrees Of Jove, and the ephemerides Of the gods, and calendars, Of the ever festal stars; Say, who was he, the sunless shade, After whose pattern man was made; With the old pale polar morn, Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Jovis, Quis ille primus, cujus ex imagine Natura solers finxit humanum genus, Æternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo, and there is a great reach of imagination in one of the conceptions which follows, that the original archetype of man may be a huge giant, stalking in some remote, unknown region of the earth, and lifting his head so high as to be dreaded by the gods, &c."-Pray let the learned reader also admire the line beginning" Tamen seorsus -the word "stringitur"-the passage about sitting among the unborn souls by the river Lethe-the "alto sinu" and " præpes "and indeed the whole, from beginning to end. Sole, yet all; first visible thought, After which the Deity wrought? Twin-birth with Pallas, not remain Doth he in Jove's o'ershadow'd brain; But though of wide communion, Dwells apart, like one alone; And fills the wondering embrace, Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei? Or inhabits with his lone Nature in the neighbouring moon; Or sits with body-waiting souls, Where a loftier bulk he rears Than Atlas, grappler of the stars, And through their shadow-touched abodes Brings a terror to the gods. Citimúmve terris incolit lunæ globum ; Sive, inter animas corpus adituras sedens, Sive in remotâ fortè terrarum plagâ Atlante major portitore siderum. Not the seer of him had sight, Who found in darkness depths of light; In all his mighty gulphs of thought: Pleiad Mercury, never shewed To any poet's wisest sight In the silence of the night : News of him the Assyrian priest f Found not in his sacred list, Non, cui profundum cæcitas lumen dedit, * Tiresias, who was blind. Sanchoniathon. Though he traced back old king Nine, And Belus, elder name divine, And Osiris, endless famed. Not the glory, triple-named, Thrice great Hermes, though his eyes Read the shapes of all the skies, Left him in his sacred verse O Plato! and was this a dream Of thine in bowery Academe? Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini, Priscumque Belon, inclytumque Osiridem; Non ille, trino gloriosus nomine, Ter magnus Hermes, ut sit arcani sciens, Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus. At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus, |