The Sun.
London, England, 1818-12-22 00:00:00

D.D. of Jesuscoljegy, Oxford.-4to.
Velle ridemur, et in mediis conatibus &egre
Succidituas, lion Linirma Valet.
The Note which we shall now extract from Dr.
SYMMONeS page, for the entertainment of out
Readers, is particularly recommended to its by its
subject,—that noble and Sublime production of
the muse of Mare, the sixth book of his immor-
tal Epic. The character which is exhibited of
WarburtoO, in this note, is bold in its outline, and
faithful in.its resemblance.
.Warburton was one
of those haughty spirits, who, rather than walk
with the multitude in the obvious and straight
road of truth, are always turtling aside into this
bye paths of error; and seem delighted to display,.
in the cause of their deformed idol, all the forces,
of their mind, and all the stores.ot their learning.
Of Warburton the mind was powerful, and the
erudition splendidly rich. But he was r, polemic;
and has shared the fate of that class of writers, to
which he chose to attach himself. He shone
brightly, and disappeared. llaviug excited the
gaze and the terror of his own day, his literary,
labours are no longer remembered, anti he now
only seat magni norminis umbra—
" BooK 171.—8 y the unanimous suffrage of the
critics, this hook has been`plac.:d in the same supe-
rior class of merit with the 2d and the 4111 ;—as.
shining, where all shine, with a lustre of distin-
guishing brilliancy. Its peculiar character is sub-
limity, and in no part of The ilEaeis is the inven-
tive faculty of the Poet more illustriously this-
played. It was, as there is good authority to,
assert, one of the three books of the unfinished
poem which were submitted to Augustus, in con-'
sequence of his pressing importunities ; anti, in-.
dependently of its higher claims in the right of.
genius, it appears to be. that portion of the poem
which has obtained the most polish from the band
of its great author'. Throughout its whole ex-
tent, as it may he remarked, we. find only one
hemistich, anti that only, where it 'fitly he regard-,
ed as most happily placed, in them acular responSe
of the raging prophetess. The attempt of War-
burton to prove that, by the descent of lEneas to
the shades, Wa3 intended his initiation into ti-a
mysteries, and that all the leading circumstances
of this adventure are nothing4nore than fivirative"
disclosures of the secret. riie4ractised at Eleusis,
'is tor? generally known to require me to oillte OR
it,. The mind of Warburton, naturally compre-'
hensive and sagacious,' was richly stored with
erudition : but it was too bold and enterprising,to
be correct in its aims or secure of its Objec.S.--,
Panting atter distinction, and never satisfied to
walk in the same track with his fellow mortals, he
is perpetually. deviating ; and his deviations are
generally from the. region of truth, which was tog
little for his_ ambition, into the brambles and'
quagmires of paradox. In his dissertation- on this
book of The £neis he
.has discovered much loge..

nuity, and, with the assistance (as it must he eon*
fessed) of Meursius, a wide compass of learning.
tint with all his powers and his acquisitious,he has
not succeeded even so far as to give speciousness
to the produce Of his exertions. To follow him •
through the long labyrinth of his sophistry would
be an unnecessary labonr, and would lead me,
also, tar beyond those limits within which I and'
confined. I will, however, give one instance of,.
the 'mode in which he conducts his argument ;,
that, ex pede Herculem, from this toot of the Co.
lossus, the Reader may form a judgment of the'
whole-shadowy frame. His first piocess through-
out the argument (if argument it may be called)
is to advance a bold and unauthorised assertion:
the next is to deduce from this unsupported al.
&Frition,. as from_a mathematical axiom, such
consequences as may be adapted to his purpose.
In this way he asserts, as a self-evident proposi-
tion, that all the descents of living heroes into
Hades, the region of the dead, which are record-
ed by the poets, were actual initiations; and that
Orpheus, Hercules, Theseus, and by consequence
lEneas, were all of them initiated ; though the
third of these chiefs, having obtained the initia-
tion by violence, was condemned for his crime to
eternal punishment. He then asserts, that these
beroef 'were initiated because they were legisla-
tors, to • which character the holy ceremony of ,
initiation was regarded as essentially requisite;
and, for the proof o'f that which he thus affirms,.
he produces, as incOfitestible. autharity.;hia line
from • Virgil, whichpeaks of Orpheus having-
descended into the infernal regions, Threiciafre-
tus cithara Jidibusque canoris,—", the-harp," as the
Bishop says, being the known symbol of his
laws, by which he humanized a rude and barba-
rous people !!!" When we read, therefore, that
the Thracian bard . descended into the realm of
'night with his lyre in his hand, for the puipose.of
recovering his wife by the power of his reclodies
on the Stygian Monatch, 'we are tolllldo stand
only that be was one of the initiated and a
! Flow the learned Prelate would dispose of
Eurydice, who constitutes a chief part of the , ,
story, is beyond, my .ability to conjecture. But if
this fantastic hypothesis be 4 been ever so spe-
ciously defended, still would it be overthrown,ty
three very sturdy facts. The mysteries were not
• instituted in Greece till a period considerably
subsequent to the days of Orplieu‘ Hercules, and
Theseus Virgil never visited Greece lilt a short
time before his death ; and, consequently, when
he wrote the sixth' book of his Epic, he could
not have beep initiated : and, lastly, on the sup.
position of his having been anteriorly initiated,
►he could not have disclosed the secrets of the
E!eusinian Pane without becoming infamous, and
exposing himself to the effects of a civil excotrs_
munication. But I have expended too much time
in tilting with this most vague and shadowy of •
shadows. On some of the more remarkable pas-
sages of this noble book, 1 may possibly offer a
( kw occAsiousiolpervation as we proceed