Of all the paradoxes which the restless vigour of his mind stimulated Warburton to maintain, the following is one of the most striking and unaccountable: "There is not," he says (Divine Legation, b. iii. p. 337), "a more extraordinary book than the Metamorphoses of Ovid, whether we regard the matter or the form. The tales appear monstrously extravagant, and the composition irregular and wild. Had it been the product of a dark age and a barbarous writer, we should have been content to have ranked it in the class of our modern Oriental fables, as a matter of no consequence: but when we consider it was wrote when Rome was in its meridian of politeness and knowledge, and by an author who, as appears from his acquaintance with the Greek tragic writers, knew well what belonged to a work or composition, we cannot but be shocked at the grotesque assemblage of its parts. One would rather distrust one's judgment, and conclude the deformity to be only in appearance, which perhaps on examination we shall find to be the case; though it must be owned, the common opinion seems to be supported by Quintilian, the most judicious critic of antiquity, who speaks of our author and his work in these words: "Ut Ovidius lascivire in Metamorphosi solet, quem tamen excusare necessitas potest, res diversissimas in speciem unius corporis colligentem." And again, p. 343: "Ovid gathered his materials from the mythological writers, and formed them into a poem on the most grand and regular plan, a popular history of Providence, carried down from the creation to his own times, through the Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman histories; and this in as methodical a manner as the graces of poetry would allow."—It was reserved therefore for Dr. Warburton to discover what none of the ancients, not even the penetrating and judicious Quintilian, who lived so much nearer the time of the author, could possibly perceive, the deep meaning, and the accurate method, of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. As Boileau said of some of the forced interpretations of Dacier in his Horace, that they were the Revelations of Dacier, it will not be uncandid or unjust to say, that this remark on Ovid is one of Warburton's Revelations. It is remarkable that the great Barrow preferred Ovid to Virgil, as Corneille did Lucan. VERTUMNUS ET POMONA. REGE Sub hoc Pomona fuit: qua nulla Latinas Inter Hamadryadas coluit solertius hortos, Nec fuit arborei studiosior altera fœtûs: 5 Unde tenet nomen. non silvas illa, nec amnes; Nec patitur sentire sitim: bibulæque recurvas 15 Hic amor, hoc studium: Veneris quoque nulla cupido. Vim tamen agrestum metuens, pomaria claudit 20 Intus, et accessus prohibet refugitque viriles. 25 VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. THE fair Pomona flourish'd in his reign; These cares alone her virgin breast employ, Το 5 10 15 20 25 |