Front Matter, p. 6 (part 2)

Footnotes 109:* As these Hymns, though full of the most recondite antiquity, have never yet been commented on by any one, the design of the following notes, is to elucidate, as much as possible, their concealed meaning, and evince their agreement with the Platonic philosophy. Hence they will be wholly of the philosophic kind: for they who desire critical and philological information, will meet with ample satisfaction in the notes of the learned Gesner, to his excellent edition of the Orphic Remains. The present Introduction to Musæus, the son of Orpheus, is, as Gesner observes, a summary of the work, without being servilely confined to the exact number of divinities: and the reader will please to observe through the whole of these Hymns, that the Orphic method of instruction consists in signifying divine concerns by symbols alone. And here it will be necessary to speak of philosophical mythology; as an accurate conception of its nature, will throw a general light p. 110 on the Hymns, and, I hope, contribute to the dispersion of that gloom in which this sublime subject has been hitherto involved, through the barbarous systems of modern mythologists. Proclus then, on Plato's Republic, p. 170, observes, that there are two kinds of fables: one, accommodated to puerile institution, but the other full of divine fury, which regards universal nature more than the ingenuity of the auditors. He then observes that the hearers of fables, are likewise to be distinguished: for some are of a puerile and simple ingenuity; but others are capable of rising higher, and of estimating intellectually the genera of the Gods, their progressions through all nature, and their various orders, which are extended to the utmost bounds of the universe. Hence, says he, having distributed both fable, and the hearers of fables into two parts, we cannot allow that the fables of Homer and Hesiod are accommodated to puerile institution; since they follow the nature and order of the universe, and unite with true beings such minds as are capable of being elevated to divine considerations. Indeed nature herself, fabricating the images of intelligible essences, and of ideas totally destitute of matter, pursues this design by many and various ways. For by parts she imitates things destitute of all parts, eternal natures by such as are temporal, intelligibles by sensibles, simple essences by such as are mixt, things void of quantity by dimensions, and things stable by unceasing mutations: all which she endeavours to express as much as she is able, and as much as the aptitude of appearances will permit. Now the authors of fables, having perceived this proceeding of nature, by inventing resemblances and images of divine concerns in their verses, imitated the exalted power of exemplars by contrary and most p. 111 remote adumbrations: that is, by shadowing forth the excellency of nature of the Gods by preternatural concerns: a power more divine than all reason, by such as are irrational: a beauty superior to all that is corporeal by things apparently base, and by this means placed before our eyes the excellence of divinity, which far exceeds all that can possibly be invented or said. After this, in another place of the same excellent work, he gives us some instances of the occult significations of fables: previously observing that those names which among us denote a worse condition of being, and have a worse signification, when applied to divine concerns, denote in the figments of the poets, a more excellent nature and power.