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Omnia tam audita quam visa recte distinctione enarrare hic Æneas profitetur: multa quorum nox ea fatalis sola conscia fuit, vir probus et pius tanquam visa referre non potuit.

V. VER. 7.

Quis talia fando Temperet a lacrymis ? Quis talia fiendo, Temperet in lachrymis?

Major enim doloris indicatio, absque modo lachrymare, quam solummodo a lachrymis non temperare.

VI. VER. 9.

Et jam nox humida cœlo

Præcipitat, suadentque cadentia sydera somnos.
Et jam nox lumina cœlo

Præcipitat, suadentque latentia sydera somnos.

Lectio, humida, vespertinum rorem solùm innuere videtur: magis mi arridet lumina, quæ latentia postquam præcipitantur, auroræ adventum annunciant. Sed si tantus amor casus cognoscere nostros, Et breviter Troja supremum audire laborem. Sed si tantus amor curas cognoscere noctis, Et brevè ter Troje superumque audire labores.

Cura Noctis (scilicet noctis excidii Trojani) magis compendiose (vel ut dixit ipse breviter) totam belli catastrophen denotat, quam diffusa illa et indetermi

nata

nata lectio, casus nostros. Ter audire gratum fuisse Didoni, patet ex libro quarto, ubi dicitur, Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores exposcit: Ter enim pro sæpe usurpatur. Troje, superumque labores, recte, quia non tantum homines sed & Dii sese his laboribus immiscuerunt. Vide Æn. ii. ver. 610, etc. Quanquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit, Incipiam.

Quanquam animus meminisse horret, luctusque resurgit, Resurgit multo proprius dolorem renascentem notat quam ut hactenus, refugit.

VII. VER. 19.

Fracti bello, fatisque repulsi

Ductores Danaûm, tot jam labentibus annis
Instar montis equum, divina Palladis arte
Edificant etc.

Tracti bello, fatisque repulsi.

Tracti & repulsi, antithesis perpulchra! Fracti, frigidè et vulgaritèr.

Equum jam Trojanum (ut vulgus loquitur) adeamus; quem si equam Græcam vocabis, lector, minime pecces: solæ enim femelle utero gestant. Uterumque armato milite complent-Uteroque recusso Insonuere cave-Atque utero sonitum quater arma dedere-Inclusos utero Danaos, &c. Vox fæta non convenit maribus,-Scandit fatalis machina muros, Foeta armis Palladem virginem, equo mari fabricando invigilare decuisse, quis putat? et incredibile prorsus! Quamobrem existimo veram eque lectionem passim restituendam, nisi ubi forte, metri caussa, equum potius quam equam, genus, pro sexu, dixit Maro. Vale! dum hæc paucula corriges, majus opus moveo.

F 4

AN

AN

ESSAY

OF THE LEARNED

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS,

CONCERNING THE

ORIGIN OF SCIENCES.

Written to the most Learned Dr.

the Deserts of NUBIA.

F.R.S. from

AMONG all the inquiries which have been pursued by the curious and inquisitive, there is none more worthy the search of a learned head, than the source from whence we derive those arts and sciences which raise us so far above the vulgar, the countries in which they rose, and the channels by which they have been conveyed. As those, who first brought them among us, attained them by travelling into the remotest parts of the earth, I may boast of some advantages by the same means; since I write this from the deserts of Ethiopia, from those plains of sand, which have buried the pride of invading armies, with my foot perhaps at this instant ten fathom over the gave of Cambyses; a solitude to which neither Pythagoras nor Apollonius ever penetrated.

It is universally agreed, that arts and sciences were derived to us from the Egyptians and Indians ;

but

but from whom they first received them is yet a secret. The highest period of time, to which the learned attempt to trace them, is the beginning of the Assyrian monarchy, when their inventors were. worshipped as Gods. It is therefore necessary to go backward into times even more remote, and to gain some knowledge of their history, from whatever dark and broken hints may any way be found in ancient authors concerning them.

Nor Troy nor Thebes were the first of empires; we have mention, though not histories, of an earlier warlike people called the Pygmæans. I cannot but persuade myself, from those accounts in Homer *, Aristotle, and others, of their history, wars and revolutions, and from the very air in which those authors speak of them as of things known, that they were then a part of the study of the learned. And though all we directly hear is of their military achievements, in the brave defence of their country from the annual invasions of a powerful enemy, yet I cannot doubt, but that they excelled as much in the arts of peaceful government; though there remain no traces of their civil institutions. Empires as great have been swallowed up in the wreck of time, and such sudden periods have been put to them, as occasion a total ignorance of their story. And if I should conjecture, that the like happened to this nation from a general extirpation of the people by those flocks of monstrous birds, wherewith antiquity agrees they were continually infested; it ought not to seem more incredible, than that one of the Baleares was wasted by rabbits, Smynthe by mice t, and of late Bermu

Il. iii. Hom.

Eustathius in Hom. Il. i.

das

das almost depopulated by rats. Nothing is more natural to imagine, than that the few survivors of that empire retired into the depths of their deserts, where they lived undisturbed, till they were found out by Osiris in his travels to instruct mankind.

"He met, says Diodorus †, in Æthiopia a sort of little Satyrs, who were hairy one half of their body, "and whose leader Pan accompanied him in his ex"pedition for the civilizing of mankind". Now of this great personage Pan we have a very particular description in the ancient writers; who unanimously agree to represent him shaggy-bearded, hairy all over, half a man and half a beast, and walking erect with a staff, the posture in which his race do to this day appear among us. And since the chief thing to which he applied himself, was the civilizing of mankind, it should seem, that the first principles of science must be received from that nation, to which the Gods were by Homer ‡ said to resort twelve days every year, for the conversation of its wise and just

inhabitants.

If from Egypt we proceed to take a view of India, we shall find, that their knowledge also derived itself from the same source. To that country did these noble creatures accompany Bacchus in his expedition under the conduct of Silenus, who is also described to us with the same marks and qualifications. "Mankind is ignorant, saith Diodorus, whence "Silenus derived his birth, through his great anti

quity; but he had a tail on his loins, as likewise "had all his progeny, in sign of their descent". Here then they settled a colony, which to this day † L. i. ch. 18. Diod.

Speede, in Bermudas.
11. i.

H Diod. L. iii. ch. 69.

subsists

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