is used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call Ingenio and the French Esprit both from the Latin but I think Wit more peculiarly signifies that of Poetry as may occur upon Remarks of the Runick Language To the first of these are Attributed the Inventions or Productions of things generally esteemed the most necessary useful or profitable to Human Life either in private Possessions or publick Institutions To the other those Writings or Discourses which are the most Pleasing or Entertaining to all that read or hear them Yet according to the Opinion of those that link them together As the Inventions of Sages and Law-givers themselves do please as well as profit those who approve and follow them so those of Poets Instruct and Profit as well as Please such as are Conversant in them and the happy mixture of both these makes the excellency in both those compositions and has given occasion for esteeming or at least for calling Heroick Virtue and Poetry Divine The Names given to Poets both in Greek and Latin express the same Opinion of them in those Nations The Greek signifying Makers or Creators such as raise admirable Frames and Fabricks out of nothing which strike with wonder and with pleasure the Eyes and Imaginations of those who behold them The Latin makes the same Word common to Poets and to Prophets Now as Creation is the first Attribute and highest Operation of Divine Power so is Prophecy the greatest Emanation of Divine Spirit in the World As the Names in those Two Learned Languages so the Causes of Poetry are by the Writers of them made to be Divine and to proceed from a Coelestial Fire or Divine Inspiration and by the vulgar Opinions recited or related to in many passages of those Authors the Effects of Poetry were likewise thought Divine and Supernatural and Power of Charms and Enchantments were ascribed to it Carmina vel Coelo possunt deducere Lunam Carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulessis Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur Anguis But I can easily admire Poetry and yet without adoring it I can allow it to arise from the greatest Excellency of natural Temper or the greatest Race of Native Genius without exceeding the reach of what is Human or giving it any Approaches of Divinity which is I doubt debased or dishonoured by ascribing to it any thing that is in the compass of our Action or even Comprehension unless it be raised by an immediate influence from it self I cannot allow Poetry to be more Divine in its effects than in its causes or any Operation produced by it to be more than purely natural or to deserve any other sort of wonder than those of Musick or of Natural Magick however any of them have appeared to minds little Versed in the Speculations of Nature of occult Qualities and the force of Numbers or of Sounds Whoever talks of drawing down the Moon from Heaven by force of Verses or of Charms either believes not himself or too easily believes what others told him or perhaps follows an Opinion begun by the Practise of some Poet upon the facility of some People who knowing the time when an Ecclypse would happen told them he would by his Charms call down the Moon at such an hour and was by them thought to have performed it When I read that Charming Description in Virgil's Eight Ecâ—logue of all sorts of Charms and Fascinations by Verses by Images by Knots by Numbers by Fire by Hearbs imployed upon occasion of a violent Passion from a jealous or disappointed Love I have recourse to the strong Impression of Fables and of Poetry to the easy mistakes of Popular Opinions to the Force of Imagination to the Secret Virtues of several Hearbs and to the Powers of Sounds And I am sorry the Natural History or Account of Fascination has not imployed the Pen of some Person of such excellent Wit and deep Thought and Learning as Gasaubon who Writ that curious and useful Treatise of Enthusiasm and by it discovered the hidden or mistaken Sources of that Delusion so frequent in all Regions and Religions of the World and which had so fatally spread over our Country in that Age in which this Treatise was so seasonably published 'T is much to be lamented That he lived not to compleat that Work in the Second Part he promised or that his Friends neglected the publishing it if it were left in Papers though loose and unfinished I think a clear Account of Enthusiasm and Fascination from their natural Causes would very much deserve from Mankind in general as well as from the Common-wealth of Learning might perhaps prevent many publick disorders and save the Life 's of many innocent deluded or deluding People who suffer so frequently upon Account of Witches and Wizards I have seen many miserable Examples of this kind in my youth at home and tho the Humor or Fashion be a good deal worn out of the World within Thirty or Forty Years past yet it still remain in several remote Parts of Germany Sueden and some other Countries But to return to the Charms of Poetry if the forsaken Lover in that Ecclogue of Virgil had expected onely from the Force of her Verses or her Charms what is the Burthen of the Song To bring Daphnis home from the Town where he was gone and engaged in a new Amour if she had pretended onely to revive an old fainting Flame or to damp a new one that was kindling in his Breast she might for ought I know have compassed such Ends by the Power of such Charms and without other than very Natural Enchantments For there is no Question but true Poetry may have the Force to raise Passions and to allay them to change and to extinguish them to temper Joy and Grief to raise Love and Fear nay to turn Fear into Boldness and Love into Indifference and into Hatred it self and I easily believe That the disheartened Spartans were new animated and recovered their lost Courage by the Songs of Tyrtaeus that the Cruelty and Revenge of Phalaris were changed by the Odes of Stesichorus into the greatest Kindness and Esteem and that many men were as passionately Enamoured by the Charms of Sappho's Wit and Poetry as by those of Beauty in Flora or Thais for 't is not onely Beauty gives Love but Love gives Beauty to the Object that raises it and if the Possession be strong enough let it come from what it will there is always Beauty enough in the Person that gives it Nor is it any great Wonder that such Force should be found in Poetry since in it are assembled all the Powers of Eloquence of Musick and of Picture which are all allowed to make so strong Impressions upon Humane Minds How far Men have been affected with all or any of these needs little Proof or Testimony The Examples have been known enough in Greece and in Italy where some have fallen down right in Love with the Ravishing Beauties of a
own Soldiers together for several days and then incorporated them into the Body of his Empire and gave to each of them Cloathes to Wear and Corn to Sow By these ways and such Heroick Vertues and by the length of his Reign he so far extended his Dominions as to divide them into four Provinces over each whereof he appointed an Ynca to be a Viceroy having many Sons grown fit to Command and in each of them established three Supream Councils the first of Justice the second of War and the third of the Revenue of which an Ynca was likewise President which continued ever after At the end of a long and adored Reign Mango-Copac fell into the last Period of his Life upon the approach whereof he called together all his Children and Grand-children with his eldest Son to whom he left his Kingdom And told them that for his own part he was going to repose himself with his Father the Sun from whom he came that he advised and charged them all to go on in the paths of Reason and Virtue which he had taught them till they followed him the same Journey that by this course only they would prove themselves to be true Sons of the Sun and be as such honored and esteemed He gave the same Charge more especially and more earnestly to the Ynca his Successor and commanded him to govern his People according to his Example and the Precepts he had received from the Sun and to do it always with Justice Mercy Piety Clemency and Care of the Poor and when he the Prince should go in time to Rest with his Father the Sun that he should give the same Instructions and Exhortations to his Successor And this Form was accordingly used in all the Successions of the Race of the Ynca's which lasted eight hundred years with the same Orders and the greatest Felicity that could be of any State I Will say nothing of the greatness magnificence and riches of their Buildings Palaces or Temples especially those of the Sun of the Splendour of their Court their Triumphs after Victories their Huntings and Feasts their Military Exercises and Honours But as testimonies of their Grandeur mention only two of their High-Ways whereof one was Five Hundred Leagues plain and levelled through Mountains Rocks and Valleys so that a Carriage might drive through that whole length without difficulty Another very long and large paved all with cut or squared Stone fenced with low Walls on each side and set with Trees whose Branches gave Shade and the Fruits Food to all that passed I shall end this Survey of their Government with one Remarque upon their Religion which is that tho' the Vulgar Worshipped only the Sun yet the Amautas who were their Sages or Philosophers taught that the Sun was only the great Minister of Pachacamac whom they adored in the first place and to whom a great and sumptuous Temple was Dedicated This word is interpreted by the Spaniards Animador del Mundo or He that animates or enlivens the World and seems to be yet a more refin'd Notion of the Deity than that of the Chineses who adored the Spirit and Soul of the World By this principle of their Religion as all the others of their Government and Policy it must I think be allowed that Human Nature is the same in these remote as well as the other more known and celebrated parts of the World That the different Governments of it are framed and cultivated by as great reaches and strength of Reason and of Wisdom as any of ours and some of their Frames less subject to be shaken by the Passions Factions and other Corruptions to which those in the middle Scene of Europe and Asia have been so often and so much exposed That the same Causes produce every where the fame Effects and that the same Honours and Obedience are in all places but Consequences or Tributes paid to the same Heroick Vertue or Transcendent Genius in what parts soever or under what Clymates of the World it fortunes to appear SECT IV. THE Third Survey I proposed to make in this Essay upon Heroick Vertue was that of the Northern Region which lies without the Bounds of the Euxin and Caspian Seas the River Oxus to the East and the Danube to the West which by the Greeks and Romans was called all by one general Name of Scythia and little known to any Princes or Subjects of the four great Monarchies otherwise than by the defeats or disgraces received in their Expeditions against these fierce Inhabitants of those barren Countries Such was the fatal Overthrow of Cyrus and his Army by the Eastern Scythians and the shameful Flight of Darius from the Western This vast Region which extends from the North-East Ocean that bounds Cataya and China to the North-West that washes the Coasts of Norway Jutland and some Northern Parts of Germany tho' comprised by the Ancients under the common name of Scythia was distinguished into the Asiatick and the European which were divided by the River Tanais and the Mountains out of which it rises Those numerous Nations may be called the Eastern Scythians who ly on that side of the Tanais or at least the Volga and those the Western that lye on this Among the first the Massagetae were the most known or talkt of by the ancient Writers and among the last the Getae and the Sarmatae The first is now comprehended under the general name of great Tartary and the second under those of the lesser Tartary Muscovy Poland Sueden and Denmark the two last styling themselves Kings of the Goths and Vandals How far this vast Territory is inhabited Northward by any Race of Mankind I think none pretends to know nor from how remote Corners of those Frozen Mountains some of those fierce Nations first crept out whose Force and Arms have been so known and felt by all the rest of what was of Old called the Habitable World Whether it be that the course of Conquest has run generally from the North to the South as from the harder upon the softer or from the poorer upon the richer Nations because Men commonly Attacque with greater fierceness and courage than they Defend being in one spirited by desire and in the other usually damped by Fear I cannot tell but certain it is how Celebrated soever the four great Monarchies have been by the Writings of so many famous Authors who have Eternized their Fame and thereby their own yet there is no part of the World that was ever Subject to Assyrian Persian Greek or Roman Empires except perhaps some little Islands that has not been Ravaged and Conquered by some of those Northern Nations whom they reckoned and despised as Barbarous Nor where new Empires Kingdoms Principalities or Governments have not been by them erected upon the ruins of the Old which may justly Mortifie the Pride of Mankind the Depths of their Reasonings the Reach of their Politicks the Wisdom of their Laws and Force of their Discipline
mixture soon Corrupted the Purity of the Latin Tongue so that in Lucan but more in Seneca we find a great and harsh Allay entered into the Style of the Augustan Age. After Trajan and Adrian had subdued many German and Scythian Nations on both sides of the Danube the Commerce of those barbarous People grew very frequent with the Romans and I am apt to think that the little Verses ascribed to Adrian were in Imitation of the Runick Poetry The Scythicas Pati Pruinas of Florus shews their Race or Clymate and the first Rhyme that ever I read in Latin with little Allusions of Letters or Syllables is in that of Adrian at his Death O Animula vagula blandula Quoe nunc abibis in loca Palidula lurida timidula Nec ut soles dabis joca 'T is probable the old Spirit of Poetry being lost or frighted away by those long and bloody Wars with such barbarous Enemies this New Ghost began to appear in its room even about that Age or else that Adrian who affected that piece of Learning as well as others and was not able to reach the old Vein turned to a new one which his Expeditions into those Countries made more allowable in an Emperor and his Example recommended to others In the time of Boetius who lived under Theodorick in Rome we find the Latin Poetry smell rank of this Gothick Imitation and the old Vein quite seared up After that Age Learning grew every day more and more obscured by that Cloud of Ignorance which coming from the North and increasing with the Numbers and Successes of those barbarous People at length over-shaddowed all Europe for so long together The Roman Tongue began it self to fail or be disused and by its Corruption made way for the Generation of three New Languages in Spain Italy and France The Courts of the Princes and Nobles who were of the Conquering Nations for several Ages used their Gothick or Franc or Saxon Tongues which were mingled with those of Germany where some of the Goths had sojourned long before they proceeded to their Conquests of the more Southern or Western Parts Wherever the Roman Colonies had long remained and their Language had been generally spoken the common People used that still but vitiated with the base allay of their Provincial Speech This in Charlemain's time was called in France Rustica Romana and in Spain during the Gothick Reigns there Romance but in England from whence all the Roman Souldiers and great Numbers of the Britains most accustomed to their Commerce and Language had been drained for the Defence of Gaul against the barbarous Nations that Invaded it about the time of Valentinian that Tongue being wholly extinguish't as well as their own made way for the intire use of the Saxon Language With these Changes the antient Poetry was wholly lost in all these Countries and a new Sort grew up by degrees which was called by a new Name of Rhymes with an easy Change of the Gothick Word Runes and not from the Greek Rythmes as is vulgarly supposed Runes was properly the Name of the antient Gothick Letters or Characters which were Invented first or Introduced by Odin in the Colony or Kingdom of the Getes or Goths which he Planted in the North-West Parts and round the Baltick Sea as has been before related But because all the Writings they had among them for many Ages were in Verse it came to be the common Name of all sorts of Poetry among the Goths and the Writers or Composers of them were called Runers or Rymers They had likewise another Name for them or for some sorts of them which was Vüses or Wises and because the Sages of that Nation expressed the best of their Thoughts and what Learning and Prudence they had in these kind of Writings they that succeeded best and with most Applause were termed Wise Men the good Sense or Learning or useful Knowledge contained in them was called Wisdom and the pleasant or facetious Vein among them was called Wit which was applied to all Spirit or Race of Poetry where it was found in any Men and was generally pleasing to those that heard or read them Of these Runes there were in use among the Goths above a Hundred several sorts some Composed in longer some in shorter Lines some equal and others unequal with many different Cadencies Quantities or Feet which in the pronouncing make many different sorts of Original or Natural Tunes Some were Framed with Allusions of Words or Consonance of Syllables or of Letters either in the same Line or in the Dystick or by alternate Succession and Resemblance which made a sort of Gingle that pleased the ruder Ears of that People And because their Language was Composed most of Monosyllables and of so great Numbers many must end in the same Sound another sort of Runes were made with the Care and Study of ending two Lines or each other of four Lines with Words of the same Sound which being the easiest requiring less Art and needing less Spirit because a certain Chime in the Sounds supplied that want and pleased common Ears this in time grew the most general among all the Gothick Colonies in Europe and made Rhymes or Runes pass for the modern Poetry in these parts of the World This was not used only in their modern Languages but during those ignorant Ages even in that barbarous Latin which remained and was preserved among the Monks and Priests to distinguish them by some shew of Learning from the Laity who might well admire it in what Degree soever and Reverence the Professors when they themselves could neither Write nor Read even in their own Language I mean not only the vulgar Lay men but even the Generality of Nobles Barons and Princes among them and this lasted till the antient Learning and Languages began to be restored in Europe about Two Hundred Years ago The common Vein of the Gothick Runes was what is Termed Dithyrambick and was of a raving or rambling sort of Wit or Invention loose and flowing with little Art or Confinement to any certain Measures or Rules yet some of it wanted not the true Spirit of Poetry in some Degree or that natural Inspiration which has been said to arise from some spark of Poetical Fire wherewith particular Men are Born And such as it was it served the turn not only to please but even to Charm the Ignorant and Barbarous Vulgar where it was in use This made the Runers among the Goths as much in request and admired as any of the antient and most celebrated Poets were among the Learned Nations for among the Blind he that has one Eye is a Prince They were as well as the others thought inspired and the Charms of their Runick Conceptions were generally esteemed Divine or Magical at least The subjects of them were various but commonly the same with those already observed in the true antient Poetry Yet this Vein was chiefly imployed upon the Records of