divine and human nature, not born of poor parents, or to be holden by the Stygian water. Moreover he discovers in the term Diespiter, in the thirty-fourth Ode of the first book, a title of Hebrew extraction, applicable to our Lord, and expressive of destruction to his enemies*, and in Ode II. lib. iii. line 29, he finds a prophetic allusion to the demolition of Jerusalem by Titus.

The most preposterous part of the hypothesis, which is to be raised on the ruins of the heathen mythology, supposes the second Ode of the second book, which intimates wrath to be due to him who should publish the sacred mysteries of Ceres, to allude to transubstantiation, the doctrines of which were not to be communicated to catechumens†; it seems scarcely possible to carry speculation farther.

* Vide note in edit. Zeunii, 1809, p. 64.

+ Animadver. in 1. 3. Odarum.

CHAP. XLIX.

Publius Ovidius Naso.

OVID, whose works are rendered familiar to us by early acquaintance, was born at Sulme, 43 years before the Christian æra. He was descended from a family of the equestrian order, and enjoyed the favour of Augustus, till for some offence given to the Emperor by his writings and conduct, he was banished by him to Tomi in Scythia, on the borders of the Euxine sea, where he deplored his fate in elegiac verse, and being unable to obtain a release, died in exile at the age of sixty.

The genius and style of this writer are certainly more calculated to amuse than to improve the mind; he leads the imagination through all the wilds of fiction, where little solid information is to be collected; his works afford however a pleasing introduction to Pagan mythology, and if the impression

which results from his writings has a tendency to corrupt the taste, it is soon corrected in the ordinary course of classical education by the chastened poetry of Virgil. Memorials of truth however are to be discovered under his fictions, and in looking back with maturer judgment to the works which he raised, and which he delighted to contemplate as indestructible monuments of genius, we often perceive amidst many grotesque and ill conceived designs, the wellwrought materials and mutilated fragments of an original and sacred edifice.

In admitting that some advantage may be derived from the writings of Ovid, the author would be understood to speak only of those works which are usually read in public seminaries of education, since no apology can be offered for the other productions of this poet, which directly administer to the passions, and reduce the arts of licentiousness to a system. The vicious affections of men do not require the excitement of poetry, to stimulate their corrupt propensities; and it is the excess of unpardonable depravity, the effect of which never can be recalled, to employ eminent talents in diffusing and perpetuating the allurements to moral evil.

These productions corrupted the Roman youth, and excited the virtuous indignation of Augustus: they have been generally rejected by the just feelings of the Christian.

Ovid in his Fasti, a work supposed to be grounded on the Carmen Saliare of Numa, exhibits an account of the festivals of the heathens, and shews that he entertained but little respect for the Pagan deities, whom he uniformly represents as actuated, and impelled to depravity by human passions.

In the Metamorphoses which begin with the commencement of the world, and terminate with the death of Cæsar, Ovid appears to have intended to indulge the luxuriancy of a poetic imagination, by a work of fancy peculiar to himself. It is possible that the design was suggested to him by the doctrine of the metempsychosis of Pythagoras, to whose tenets he appears to have been partial, and whose philosophy, he has stated, agreeably to the mode in which it was originally delivered *, in verses which for perspicuity and elegance might almost dispute the palm with Lucretius.

Remains of a primitive creed in one su

* Cicero. Tuscul. Quest. lib. iv. and Vitruv. lib. v. procm. + Metamorph. lib. xv. Vitruv. de Architect. L. 5. Præf. P. 78. Edit. Amstel.

preme God, under whatever name known, the Father of gods and men, and entitled to admiration and gratitude, together with vestiges of traditionary knowledge, if not of sacred history, appear in every part of the Metamorphoses. In the very commencement of the work we discover amidst many extravagant fancies, almost a transcript of the Mosaic account of the creation, in which the progress and development of the mighty work are detailed in their successive stages, and nearly in the same order in which they are displayed by the inspired writer.

After the description of Chaos, which Ovid represents as without form and dark *, but, in the error of heathen philosophy, as consisting of pre-existing matter, rather than as void, he proceeds to mention the separation of the heavens from the earth, and the division, or gathering together of the waters ; the shining forth of the lights in the firmament of heaven; the production of animals ; and lastly, the formation of man, created either, or, as perhaps it may be understood, partly from a Divine Spirit, and partly from earth; and formed in the image

Metamorph. i. and Fasti. lib. i. § 4