The incorporation with the native Spaniards, and both parties experienced the horrors of a war at their own gates, which admitted few and fhort intervals of quiet and repofe. At length the long-depending contest was determined, and the total expulfion of the Moors delivered Spain for a time from all internal terrors and commotions: he had scarce enjoyed a breathing space, before she started on a course of new and diftant adventures in the late discovered world. Every one now flocked with ardour to America, as to a fecond crufade; can it be wondered at if arts and fciences flood still in the mean time? When he had massacred kings, and laid wafte their kingdoms for the extortion of treasure, the found that the ores of Mexico and Peru, like the ftreams of the Tagus and the Douro, ran through her dominions only to empty their ftores into the hands of her neighbours and rivals. Although thefe confequences may well refult from the bad policy of her proceedings, yet it will naturally be the cafe that all difcoverers of countries, like projectors in the arts, exhaust themselves in the firft efforts, and leave others to erect their fortune, where they have laid the foundation. commerce of the European nations has been established upon the difcoveries of Spain, and every other treasury is filled from the mines of the new world except her own. Whilt he was extending her empire over the barren Cordeleras, the richest provinces in Europe fell off from her dominion; Portugal took the harbour of Lisbon and a valuable tract of coaft from the heart of her empire; the standard of Britain flew in triumph upon the pillars of Hercules, whilft fhe continued to ftretch her feeble arms over half the globe, fo to remain, till the first convulfive fhock fhall make her quit her hold. Sill fhe might have remained refpectable in misfortunes, and formidable in decay; the laft hand that was put to her ruin, held the pen which figned away her reputation and independence in the family compact; generous, unfufpecting and impolitic, fhe has bound herself to an ally, whofe union, like the action of certain chemical mixtures, will diffolve every noble particle in her compofition, and leave her fpiritlefs and vapid. Great empires, like great men, are aggrandized and fecured by the coalition of inferiors; petty states may fometimes be foftered into temporary importance to ferve occafional purposes; but kingdoms, fuch as France and Spain, of recent equality and emulation, can never find reciprocal advantages in political alliance; the interefts of the weaker party muft of neceflity become a facrifice to those of the fronger and more artful, and with which of the two that fuperiority actually lies, and thofe advantages are likely to remain, is a point too clear to admit a doubt, or need an explanation.' It is a juftice which we owe to Mr. Cumberland to remark, that he does not affect to be deep in the fcience of painting: for he modeftly fpeaks of himself as an ordinary obferver.' But his readers, we believe, will allow him more merit than he is difpofed to affume. If he is not a learned virtuofo, it may be faid, that he has yet difcovered both tafte and penetration in his judgments of celebrated painters. Nor is he defective in the art of compofition. His book, while it must inftruct inftru&t from the novelty of the fubject, is agreeable from the eafy politeness of the language *. • We have noted a few little peculiarities of expreffion; but they are minutia, to which the writer of this Article is not, at prefent, inclined to defcend. Art. XII. Two Differtations: I. On the Grecian Mythology: II. An Examination of Sir Ifaac Newton's Objections to the Chronology of the Olympiads. By the late Samuel Mufgrave, M. D. F. R. S. Published by Subscription for the Benefit of the furviving Family. 8vo. 5 s. Nichols. THE HE name of the late Dr. Mufgrave, prefixed to Difcourfes on Subjects of Grecian Literature, cannot fail to excite the curiofity of every lover of claffical antiquity and though this curiofity may fuffer fome check from a reasonable prejudice against all pofthumous publications for the benefit of a furviving family, yet when the Public is apprized that thefe Differtations owe their appearance to the friendly benevolence of the learned and judicious Mr. Tyrwhitt, no one, we imagine, will be under any apprehenfion left the work before us should difcredit the memory of the Author. The beauty and fublimity of those compofitions in which the Grecian mythology hath been tranfmitted to pofterity, naturally inspires all who have a tafte for the literary productions, and efpecially for the poetry of ancient Greece, with a defire to trace the particular fables to their primitive fource; while the philofophical enquirer into the hiftory of man finds his curiofity interested in the following queftion, viz. To what circumstances may it be attributed, and by what facts may it be explained, that a people fo enlightened and refined, who had attained to fo high a perfection in the arts of poetry and eloquence, that all the other nations of the earth have been content to admire and imitate them at a humble diftance, fhould nevertheless have adopted fuch a monftrous fyftem of religious belief as would be the difgrace of human nature under circumstances of the molt illiterate barbarity?—The learned of both thefe defcriptions have attempted by various methods to illuftrate and explain those ancient fables. subject hath been difcuffed with all the diverfity of learning and genius: the comprehenfive fcience and fagacity of Bacon; the copious and profound erudition of Bochart, Huetius, and Gerard John Voffius; the fanciful plaufibility of Bryant, and the affectation and pedantry of Blackwell. The The origin of the tabulous hiftory is a matter fo involved in the darkness of high antiquity, that we may venture to affirm with the most perfect confidence, that whoever expects to find his refearches recompenfed by certainty of difcovery will be greatly difappointed. It is a fairy land of conjecture, in which it can be no wonder if every new traveller should strike out into a path of his own! For diftin&tnefs-fake we may range thofe adventurers under three claffes. In one divifion we may place those who have confidered the fables as allegories of nature:-in another, those who have fuppofed them to be the corruptions of civil hiftory; and in a third, fuch as imagining them to be a mixture of both, have attempted to explain fone of them by the phoenomena of nature, and others by the events of hiftory. To this latter clafs our learned and ingenious Author belongs; though, as far as we recollect, without fervilely treading in the steps of any predeceffor. Dr. Mulgrave enters on the fubject with contradicting the affertion of Herodotus, "That the theology of the Greeks was no older than the times of Homer and Hefiod:" to which pofition he first oppofes the authority of that profound and accurate Grecian antiquary Paufanias; and farther argues that Homer was not the author of his mythology, because he never attempts to explain it, but fuppofes his readers, or rather his hearers fufficiently acquainted with it; to which obfer. vation it may be added, that feveral of the Grecian temples were in being long before Homer. Our Author next applies himself to refute an opinion countenanced by Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, but of which Theopompus the hiftorian is faid by Proclus to have been the firft inventor, viz. that a part of Greece, and particularly Athens, was peopled by colonies from Egypt. This hypothefis Dr. Mufgrave endeavours to difprove from a diffimilitude of cuftoms between the Grecks and Egyptians, in various inftances of great importance in fuch an argument; and likewife from their very different obje&s of religious worship: and from a view of the whole, he draws two conclufions which we will give to our readers in the words of the Author: fiift, That the Greeks in general were an indigenous people; and fecondly, that their religion and mythology were radically, if not entirely their own. *The gicat Lord Bacon has made ufe of the fame argument to the fame purpofe; which if our Author had recollected, he was too ingenuous not to have acknowledged. Ante omnia illud apud nos maximè valuit et plurimum valuit, ponderis habuit quod ex fabu lis complures nullo medo nobis videntur ab eis invente à quibus recitantur et celebrantur, Homero, Hefiodo, reliquis.Si quis enim attentius rem confideret, apparebit illas trasi, et referri tanquam prius creditas et receptas, non tanquam tum primo excogitatas et ablatas. Vid. Præf. Lib de Sapientia Veterum. The The learned author having thus attempted to clear the ground, endeavours to place the mythology of the Greeks on its proper foundation. With this view he divides his fubje& into two claffes; and treats of that fpecies of mythology which he calls ESSENTIAL, and that which he denominates as only ACCESSORY. By the effential he means the worship of the fuperior gods, whom he confiders as fo many allegorical perfonages, reprefenting either the great divifions of nature, Heaven, Air, Sea, Earth; or elfe thofe operations and qualities which have a more particular influence upon the animal world or upon fociety. By the acceffory he underftands, either fome wonderful phænomena of nature, or fome hiftorical facts of more than ordinary confequence, related in the ftyle of allegory, and heightened into all the folemnity of miracles. Of each clafs our Author gives feveral inftances to exemplify his general principles; after which he proceeds to explain fon e parts of the mythological history, in which he finds no appearance of thole general principles which have hitherto conducted his interpretations. As a fpecimen of our Author's style and manner, we thall felect a part of what he hath advanced on the much celebrated expedition of the Argonauts. The ftory of Jalon, and his expedition to Colchis, is fuller of miracles and contradictions than almoft any part of the Grecian mythology; and therefore we ought not to wonder that it fhould be confidered by many of the moderns as an abfolute fiction, deftitute of any hiftorical bafis. Yet the ancients all admit it as a fact; their chronologers fix the very year in which it took place; and their geographers, with equal gravity, fpecify the port from whence they et fail, and thofe which they touched at in their voyage out and home. And as to the perfons concerned in the expedition, nothing can be more particular than the account given by grammarians of their parentage and of the place of their relidence. The object of their voyage, as the poets reprefent it, was truly ridiculous: but as explained by hiftorians was every way adequate to the difficulty of the undertaking. The fable of the Golden Fleece, according to Strabo *, took its rife from the method ufed by the inhabitants of Phafis to entangle and collect the gold duft wathed down from the hills, which was by placing across the rivers a number of theep-fkins with the fleeces adnering to them. And this is confirmed by Appian †, who intimates that Pompey the Great, after the defeat of Mithridates, made himfelt an eye-witnefs of the fact. It was natural, therefore, for the Greeks to confider the country of • L. xi ↑ Mithrida. p. 242. Ed. H. Steph. Colchis Colchis as a fort of Peru; efpecially when the riches of it were magnified, as no doubt they were, by the marvellous reports of travellers. It was not therefore a single fleece that allured them, but the conqueft or general plunder of the country. Now this, it is obvious, was not to be effected by fo fmall a number of warriors as one and fifty, which is the highest number mentioned in any of the lifts: and we are obliged, therefore, either to reject the ftory entirely, or to suppose with Charax, an ancient grammarian, that instead of one and fifty mariners, each of thofe fuppofed mariners was captain of a feparate fhip, if not commander of a little fleet. It fhould feem from Strabo, that they at firft penetrated far into the country, which the fuddennefs of the attack will very well account for: but their precipitate retreat from Colchis, the formidable. fleet fent after them by the natives, their being compelled to take a different courfe in their return, and the little we learn of the Argonauts afterwards:All this clearly shows that their fuccefs was not permanent; but that they were difgracefully defeated and difappointed of their booty. Had it been otherwife I should think we might have heard more of the golden fleece after its arrival in Italy than barely, what Apollodorus fays, that it was prefented to Pelias. What I have already faid will fufficiently obviate one of the arguments with which Mr. Bryant ‡ hath attempted to annihilate the hiftorical basis of the ftory. He is right in faying, that the crew of a little bilander could not atchieve fo many exploits, defeat armies, build cities, and leave several colonies behind them. This is a point given up by all attentive and critical enquirers both ancient and modern. Nor is the conqueft of Peru by Pizarro, though effected with a mere handful of men, at all a fimilar cafe. Yet it is far from impoffible that the mythologift, to render the story more interesting and furprifing, may have dropped all mention of the viles anime that conftituted the bulk of the army. And this is the more probable, as we find the fame thing practifed in respect to Hercules, who is often reprefented as having atchieved by perfonal ftrength, what he only did at the head of his troops. Thus of the defeating the Minya, Euripides fays, OS EIS MIVUaIi waoi, &c. &c. Vid. Herc. Fur. v. 220. Whereas Diodorus § exprefsiy tells us, that he was not the fingle actor in this exploit, but accompanied by all the young men of Thebes. Mr. Byrant infifts ftrongly upon the contradictory accounts given by different authors of this expedition; which in Analyfis, vol. ii. p. 487, * L. i. + L. i. c. 27. his |