We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter and Neptune, that the
pestilential heat of the dog-days, wherein was great mortality,
should be mitigated with wind." This is one of those dateless
benefits conferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar
day, though we still find some similitude to them in our dreams,
in which we have a more liberal and juster apprehension of
things, unconstrained by habit, which is then in some measure put
off, and divested of memory, which we call history.

According to fable, when the island of AEgina was depopulated by
sickness, at the instance of AEacus, Jupiter turned the ants into
men, that is, as some think, he made men of the inhabitants who
lived meanly like ants. This is perhaps the fullest history of
those early days extant.


The fable which is naturally and truly composed, so as to satisfy
the imagination, ere it addresses the understanding, beautiful
though strange as a wild-flower, is to the wise man an apothegm,
and admits of his most generous interpretation. When we read
that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they leapt
into the sea, mistaking it for a meadow full of flowers, and so
became dolphins, we are not concerned about the historical truth
of this, but rather a higher poetical truth. We seem to hear the
music of a thought, and care not if the understanding be not
gratified. For their beauty, consider the fables of Narcissus,
of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morning, the representative of all
promising youths who have died a premature death, and whose
memory is melodiously prolonged to the latest morning; the
beautiful stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone