1829.]

tive poets, yet a very bad versifier, "artificial and elaborate; timid and pompous; deserting simplicity, without attaining dignity." His versification is, however, but the husk and stalk; the fruit which grows up with them is of a delicious taste and flavour. Pp. 181, 182.

We shall close our notices of these admirable Lectures with the following character of the Drama:

"The Drama is to Epic poetry_what sculpture is to historical painting. It is, perhaps, on the whole, a severer art. It rejects many adventitious aids, of which the epic may avail itself. It has more unity and simplicity. Its figures stand out more boldly, and in stronger relief. But then it has no aerial back ground; it has no perspective of enchantment; it cannot draw`so largely on the imagination of the spectator; it must present to the eye, and make palpable to the touch, what the epic poet may steep in the rainbow hues of fancy, and veil, but with a veil of light woven in the looms of his imagination. The epic poet is the dramatic author and the actor combined." P. 43.

We shall here leave the painting, to proceed to the music,-the prose to proceed to the poetry.

The characteristics of Neele's poetry are sweetness and delicacy. It is such poetry as Ariel might be presumed to have written. His songs are the silver tones of an Eolian harp, and the notes are ideas, assimilating the dreams of youth and love. These songs have, however, in the most part been published in popular periodicals; and we select the following as an excellent specimen of his poetical talent, which has never before appeared in print. It is an analysis of the religion of lovers, and the heaven of their Bible.

"Love in the soul, not bold and confident,
But like Aurora, trembles into being;
And with faint flickering and uncertain beams,
Gives notice to the awakening world within

Of the full blazing orb, that soon shall rise,
And kindle all its passions. Then begin
Sorrow and joy,-unutterable joy,
And rapturous sorrow. Then the world is
nothing;

Pleasure is nothing; suffering is nothing; Ambition, riches, praise, power, all are nothing;

Love rules and reigns despotic and alone.
Then, oh! the shape of magic loveliness
He conjures up before us. In her form
Is perfect symmetry. Her swan-like gait,
As she glides by us, like a lovely dream,

the soul

43

Seems not of earth. From her bright eye [heap, Looks out, and, like the topmost gem o' the Shews the mine's wealth within. Upon her face,

As on a lovely landscape, shade and sunlight, Play as strong feeling sways; now her eye

flashes

Our opinion of Neele is, that these posthumous Memoirs show off his real powers better than any preceding publications, and that, had he been fortunately a member of a public School tained the first honours, of course preand a University, he would have atferment, and that his melancholy exit would have been prevented. Our ancestors thought that boys of talent, and thus best provided for. But in the likely to prove abstract characters, were the effects of magic. But Neele was present day, empiricism is to produce made for the study, not for the world.

Here we shall leave this wreath of

roses, the garland which hangs over your untimely tomb, poor Neele! in the language of your own Shakspeare, -dead-dead-dead. It is, however, some satisfaction for us, as friends, to know that we have done justice to your intellectual nobility when you were alive; and sincere is our regret, that all which now remains of you is only an apparition of Memory!

Bowles's Hermes Britannicus. (Continued from vol. xcviii. ii. page 530.) MR. BOWLES'S grand position is, that

"The sacred stones, consecrated to Druidical worship, grew out of the aboriginal obeliscal stone sacred to the great archetype of Mercury in Egypt, connected with the doctrines which he derived from sacred tra

44

REVIEW.

dition. He might be supposed the most active human means of delivering to the survivors of the world in the earliest ages after the deluge, this sacred tradition, being in his human character Thoth, the GRANDSON of Ham." P. 67.

We have before hinted, that Herodotus, Herodian, Maximus Tyrius, Prudentius, and many other authors, make simple stones to be the archetypes of statues, and that each stone, in the Greek Baruha, represented a Deity1. It is also a received opinion, that Polytheism grew jointly out of the veneration entertained for distinguished individuals, and Sabæism, or worship of the heavenly bodies. The union of both led to the Orrery temples of the Druids; for that human beings were after death converted into celestial bodies, requires no proof, and that the Druids intermixed Polytheism with Astronomy, is evident from Cæsar. In fact, mythology is not to be explained by any other means than that the gods were celebrated men, and that there were two sorts of gods, the celestial bodies, and these deified men. We shall translate the origin of mythology as given by Banier and others who have studied the subject2. "Diodorus of Sicily supposes every where, that the gods had been men. He speaks of Saturn, Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, and many others, as illustrious men; he enters into the detail of their actions and their conquests, their amours and their misfortunes, without forgetting the history of their birth, their death, and often their tomb. The Greeks and the Romans are not the only persons who have deified men; the Egyptians and the Phenicians, the most ancient nations of the world, have first given the example of it. They had, according to their historians, two sorts of gods; one immortal, as the sun, moon, stars, and the elements; the other mortal, i. e. great men, who by their fine actions had deserved to be placed in the rank of the immortal gods, and had, like them, temples, altars, and a religious service."

But we must add, from discoveries among complete savages, that there is a species of idolatry distinct from either of these, and being neither an apotheosis of human beings or planetary worship,

[Jan.

but the barbarous creation of fiction and imagination; and in a scientific view, this is anterior to any other system: but though we see traces of this rudeness among the Australasians and American Indians, Sir William Drummond is of opinion, that the division of the signs of the zodiac was made before the Deluge.

The introduction of the Greek and Roman mythology among the Druids seems to have been derived from the Phocæan colonists at Marseilles, for they drew from them their use of Greek letters. Their magic astrology_and the golden torques came from the East, as appears from the following words of Tertullian. "Magi et Astrologi ab oriente venerunt. Purpura illa et aurum cervicis ornamentum eodem more apud Egyptios et Babylonios insignia. erant diguitatis." We are sure, therefore, that the Torquis was common both to the Egyptians and Druids; and, if they borrowed one thing, they might do another.

With regard to Mr. Bowles's appropriation of the obeliscal stone to Thoth, grandson of Ham, such an hypothesis may to a certain extent be reconciled with Druidical astronomical worship; for Sir William Drummond says, that in Asia the Sun was worshipped by names, which can be traced to Ham; and that oriental tradition has attributed to Ham either the invention or the renovation of the worship of the host of heaven. The descendants of Ham established themselves on the coasts of the Mediterranean, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt7. There is of course no difficulty in tracing the progress of the solar worship from the east to this island, after the discovery of navigation. This art the Egyptians are supposed to have abhorred; but Sir William Drummond disproves the opinion, and shows, that the worship of Isis had been introduced into Germany, Gaul, and Britain, at a very early period, and how this could happen, if the ancient Egyptians were unaccustomed to navigation, it would be difficult to says. It is certain also, that armillary spheres, and astronomical and mathematical instruments, though

46

REVIEW.-Bowles's that the Tyrian Hercules was called Meλxaplos, Melkarthos. ·Meikarthos was a title given to Hercules, as representing the Sun 19.

Mercury or Ermes was, among the Phenicians and Egyptians, an entirely distinct deity from Thoth, and Mercury Teutates was a confusion of our early ancestors, similar to that of the Greeks, explained by Sir William in manner following. The Greeks appear to have taken their Hermes from the Egyptians; but they were not aware that this name did not belong to Thoth, but to the Egyptian Hercules. They therefore confounded the character of Thoth with that of Hercules, and not only mistook these deities in some instances, for each other, but confounded both with Anubis. Nor was this all. The Phenician and Syrian idolators adored a deity whom they called on Mercolis. This god, as his name implies, was the god who presided over mercantile affairs; and heaps of stones [our Cairns or Tumuli], which were called nipard, mergomoth, were raised in his honour. We see here the evident prototype of the Mercury of the Latins, at least under one of his characters. An old commentator on Persius says of Mercury, ipsum deum lucri dicunt, unde et cum saccello pingitur, et a negotiatoribus plurimum colitur. This deity was then easily connected with the oriental Mercolis, and with the Egyptian Anubis, whose name was supposed to announce him as the god of Gold. Festus Pomponius (L. 2) says, Mercurius a mercibus est dictus; hunc etenim negotiarum omnium existimabant esse deum-et capite canino effingi solitum, quòd canis sagacissimum sit animalium. But with the leave of Pomponius, I should say, that the name of Mercurius is nothing else than Mercolis, which signifies mercator altered to a Latin form. In the latter part of the sentence he clearly connects Mercury with Anubis."

"From the whole of this statement I that the Greeks and Romans argue, united in their Hermes or Mercury various deities, whom the Egyptians and Asiatics considered as distinct. The reader will decide, whether I be right or not, in contending that the Thoth of the Egyptians was not the same deity whom they called Hermes; and that the Greeks mistook the name

19 Origines, i. 467.

of the god who represented the vis causalis generationis, for that of the God who was the inventor of letters, and the father of the sciences 20."

We have thus laid before Mr. Bowles the difficulties attached to the identity of the Egyptian Thoth, with Hermes, or the Gaulish Mercurius Teutates. All authors conceive obelisks to be symbolic of the Sun, and it is very possible that an obeliscal stone in the centre of an Orrery temple might have this meaning.

We observe, that Mr. Bowles, pp. 23-25, has quoted the Welch History for the Celts, coming from the land of Hav, or Ham, that is, the descendants of Ham came from the shores of the Mediterranean, an old story, to which we have adverted in the early part of this article, and made by the Welch a discovery! We have spoken repeatedly of the vitiation of History by the Welch, of which one leading cause is, a habit of etymologizing words, and then annexing to them legends which are the mere creations of fancy. A curious instance of this occurs in regard to Taut or Thoth. It is quite plain, that Thoth was derived from Taut, Thoth, Theut, &c. but it seems he was called by the Britons Diw Taith, the god of journies, and says Sammes (p. 126), "the great honour they gave him above all other deities, is conjectured by some to be a sign of the Britons' peregrinations from far countries, and upon that account they so particularly Now if Taut was ever derived from honoured him as their guide and leader." Diw Taith, he must have been of Brit

ish nomenclature and ancestry, but this is a perfect absurdity, yet not more so than all Welch history. It does not explain a single phænomenon, because, like Ovid's Metamorphoses, it makes nothing of something, instead of something of nothing. It is wholly composed of Etymology, Legends, and Poetical Metaphors, in defiance of the moral duty of veracity, in print or in conversation.

(To be continued.)

Days departed; or Banwell Hill. A Lay of the Severn Sea. By the Rev. Wm. Lisle Bowles. 8vo. pp. 120. Murray.

MR. BOWLES, in this elegant and interesting poem, includes sketches of his early life, with picturesque scenery,

20 Origines, i. 469.