NUMBER LXVII. Musa dedit fidibus Divos, puerosque Deorum, HORAT. In times of very remote antiquity, when men were not so lavish of their wit as they have since been, Poetry could not furnish employment for more than Three Muses; but as business grew upon their hands and departments multiplied, it became necessary to enlarge the commission, and a board was constituted consisting of nine in number, who had their several presidencies allotted to them, and every branch of the art poetic thenceforth had its peculiar patroness and superintendent. As to the specific time when these three senior goddesses called in their six new assessors, it is matter of conjecture only; but if the poet Hesiod was, as we are told, the first who had the honour of announcing their names and characters to the world, we may reasonably suppose this was done upon the immediate opening of their new commission, as they would hardly enter upon their offices without apprising all those, whom it might concern, of their accession. Before this period, the three eldest sisters condescended to be maids of all work; and if the work became more than they could turn their hands to, they have nobody but themselves and their fellow deities to complain of; for had they been content to have let the world go on in its natural course, mere mortal poets would not probably have overburthened either it or them; but when Apollo himself (who being their president should have had more consideration for their ease) begot the poet Linus in one of his terrestrial frolics, and endowed him with hereditary genius, he took a certain method to make work for the muses: accordingly, we find the chaste Calliope herself, the eldest of the sisterhood, and who should have set a better example to the family, could not hold out against this heavenly bastard, but in an unguarded moment yielded her virgin honours to Linus, and produced the poet Orpheus: such an instance of celestial incontinence could not fail to shake the morals of the most demure; and even the cold goddess Luna caught the flame, and smuggled a bantling into the world, whom, maliciously enough, she named Musæus, with a sly design no doubt of laying her child at the door of the Parnassian nunnery. Three such high-blooded bards as Linus, Orpheus, and Musæus, so fathered and so mothered, were enough to people all Greece with poets and musicians; and in truth they were not idle in their generation, but like true patriarchs spread their families over all the shores of Ionia and the islands of the Archipelago it is not therefore to be wondered at, if the three sister muses, who had enough to do to nurse their own children and descendents, were disposed to call in other helpmates to the task, and whilst Greece was in its glory, it may well be supposed that all the nine sisters were fully employed in bestowing upon every votary a portion of their attention, and answering every call made upon them for aid and inspiration: much gratitude is due to them from their favoured poets, and much hath been paid, for even to the present hour they are invoked and worshipped by the sons of verse, whilst all the other deities of Olympus have either abdicated their thrones, or been dismissed from them with contempt; even Milton himself in his sacred epic invokes the heavenly muse, who inspired Moses on the top of Horeb or of Sinai; by which he ascribes great antiquity as well as dignity to the character he addresses. The powers ascribed to Orpheus were, under the veil of fable, emblems of his influence over savage minds, and of his wisdom and eloquence in reclaiming them from that barbarous state: upon these impressions civilization and society took place the patriarch, who founded a family or tribe, the legislator who established a state, the priest, prophet, judge, or king, are characters, which, if traced to their first sources, will be found to branch from that of poet: the first prayers, the first laws, and the earliest prophecies were metrical; prose hath a later origin, and before the art of writing was in existence, poetry had reached a very high degree of excellence, and some of its noblest productions were no otherwise preserved than by tradition. As to the sacred quality of their first poetry, the Greeks are agreed, and to give their early bards the better title to inspiration, they feign them to be descended from the Gods; Orpheus must have profited by his mother's partiality, and Linus. may well be supposed to have had some interest with his father Apollo. But to dwell no longer on these fabulous legends of the Greeks, we may refer to the books of Moses for the earliest and most authentic examples of sacred poetry: every thing that was the immediate effusion of the prophetic spirit seems to have been chaunted forth in dithyrambic measure; the valedictory blessings of the patriarchs, when dying, the songs of triumph and thanksgiving after victory are metrical, and high as the antiquity of the sacred poem of Job undoubtedly is, such nevertheless is its character and construction, as to carry strong internal marks of its being written in an advanced state of the art. The poet therefore, whether Hebrew or Greek, was in the earliest ages a sacred character, and his talent a divine gift, a celestial inspiration : men regarded him as the ambassador of Heaven and the interpreter of its will. It is perfectly in nature, and no less agreeable to God's providence, to suppose that even in the darkest times some minds of a more enlightened sort should break forth, and be engaged in the contemplation of the universe and its author: from meditating upon the works of the Creator, the transition to the act of praise and adoration follows as it were of course: these are opera tions of the mind, which naturally inspire it with a certain portion of rapture and enthusiasm, rushing upon the lips in warm and glowing language, and didaining to be expressed in ordinary and vulgar phrase; the thoughts become inflated, the breast labours with a passionate desire to say something worthy of the ear of Heaven, something in a more elevated tone and cadence, something more harmonious and musical; this can only be effected by measured periods, by some chaunt, that can be repeated in the strain again and again, grateful at once to the ear and impressive on the memory; and what is this but poetry? Poetry then is the Janguage of prayer, an address becoming of the Deity; it may be remembered; it may be repeated in the ears of the people called together for the pur'poses of worship; this is a form that may be fixt upon their minds, and in this they may be taught to join. The next step in the progress of poetry from the praise of God is to the praise of men: illustrious characters, heroic actions are singled out for cele. bration the inventors of useful arts, the reformers of savage countries, the benefactors of mankind, are extolled in verse, they are raised to the skies; and the poet, having praised them as the first of men whilst on earth, deifies them after death, and, conscious that they merit immortality, boldly bestows it, and assigns to them a rank and office in heaven appropriate to the character they maintained in life; hence it is that the merits of a Bacchus, a Hercules, and numbers more are amplified by the poet, till they become the attributes of their divinity, altars are raised and victims immolated to their worship. These are the fanciful effects of poetry in its second stage: religion over-heated turns into enthusiasm ; enthusiasm forces the imagination into all the visionary regions of fable, and idolatry takes possession of the whole Gentile world. The Egyptians, a mysterious dogmatizing race, begin the work with symbol and hieroglyphic; the Greeks, a vain ingenious people, invent a set of tales and fables for what they do not understand, embellish them with all the glittering ornaments of poetry, and spread the captivating delusion over all the world. In the succeeding period we review the poet in full possession of this brilliant machinery, and with all Olympus at his command: surrounded by Apollo and the muses, he commences every poem with an address to them for protection; he has a deity at his call for every operation of nature; if he would roll the thunder, Jupiter shakes Mount Ida, to dignify his description; Neptune attends him in his car, if he would allay the ocean; if he would let loose the winds to raise it, Eolus unbars his cave; the spear of Mars and the ægis of Minerva arm him for the battle; the arrows of Apollo scatter pestilence through the air; Mercury flies upon |