altars of the Gods to follow and worship her*, having paid her their full homage of admiration, not so much as one aspired to a closer union with her: intimating the general preference given to temporal things above spiritual: Virtus laudatur & alget. However, amidst this neglect, she is happily contracted to, and possesses, the celestial Cupid, or DIVINE LOVE, who cohabits with her INVISIBLY amidst a scene of paradisaical pleasures and enjoyments. But is warned by Cupid not to hearken to the pernicious counsel of her sisters, whose envy at her happiness, from their own choice of husbands diseased and avaricious †, the lot of those under the dominion of their appetites, would soon bring them to attempt her ruin, in persuading her to get a sight of her invisible spouse, Against which SACRILEGIOUS CURIOSITY, as what would deprive her of all her happiness ‡, and to which her sisters would endeavour to inflame her mind, he carefully warns her. By all which the Author would insinuate, that they are the irregular passions and the ungovernable appetites which stir up men's curiosity to this species of magic, the THEÜRGIC VISION. However, Psyche falls into the snare her sisters had Apuleii Met. ed. Pricei, p. 85. Interea Psyche, cum sua sibi præcipua pulchritudine nullum decoris sui fructum percipit. Spectatur ab omnibus; laudatur ab omnibus, nec quisquam-cupiens ejus nuptiarum petitur accedit. + P. 94. ↑ Identidem monuit, ac sæpe terruit, ne quando sororum pernicioso consilio suasa, de forma Mariti quærat: neve se SACRI LEGA CURIOSITATE de tanto fortunarum suggestu pessum dejiciat; nec suum postea contingat amplexum. P. 92. laid for her, and against the express injunction of the God, sacrilegiously attempts this forbidden sight; though he assured her *, that if she kept the religious secret, the child to be born of them should be immortal; but if she prophaned it, the child would be mortal, intimating, that Theürgic Magic was so far from rendering the participants divine, that it loaded them with impiety. In a word, she indulges her inordinate appetite, and is undone: Divine Love forsakes her; the happy scenes of her abode vanish; and she finds herself forlorn and abandoned, surrounded with miseries, and pursued with the vengeance of heaven by its instrument the Celestial Venus. In this distress she first comes to the temple of CERES for protection; by which is meant the custom of having recourse to the Mysteries against the evils and disasters of life, as is plainly intimated in the reason given for her application" nec ullam vel du"biam SPEI MELIORIS viam volens omittere †.' Spes melior being the common appellation for what was sought for in the Mysteries, and what they promised to the participants. With these sentiments she addresses Ceres in the following observation: "Per ego te frugiferam tuam dextram istam deprecor per tacita sacra cistarum-per-per, et cetera quæ "silentio tegit Eleusinis Atticæ sacrarium-‡” But Psyche is denied any protection both here and at the temple of Juno: for the purer Mysteries discouraged all kind of magic, even the most specious. However, she is pitied by both. The reason Ceres Infantem-si texeris nostra secreta silentio, divinum; si profanaveris, mortalem, P. 96. gives her for not complying with her request is remarkable. She had entered, she said, into an ancient league with Venus, which she could not violate *. By which is intimated, that all the Mysteries had one and the same end. And Psyche, she said, had reason to thank her that she did not seize on her and detain her prisoner; alluding to the obligation that all were under to bring to punishment the violators of the Mysteries. 446 Juno excuses herself, from imparting any assistance, "out of reverence to the Laws, which forbid any one to entertain another's runaway servant ‡. For those who had violated the Mysteries of one God could not be admitted to those of another. In this distress PSYCHE resolves at last to render herself to the offended Parties, and implore their pardon. Venus imposes on her a long and severe penance; in which the author seems to have shadowed out the trials and labours undergone by the aspirants to the Mysteries, and the more severe in proportion to the delinquencies of the aspirants, intimated in the words of Venus to her-Sed jam nunc ego sedulo periclitabor an oppido forti animo, singularique prudentia sis prædita §. During the course of these trials, PSYCHE falls" once more into distress by her rash curiosity ||, and would be undone but for the divine assistance, which cum qua etiam antiquum foedus amicitiæ colo. P. 111. t quod a ne retenta custoditaque non fueris optimi consule. P. 112. tunc etiam Legibus, quæ servos alienos profugos, invitis Dominis, vetant suscipi, prohibeor, P. 112, § P. 118, Mente capitur TEMERARIA CURIOSITATE, p. 123. all all along supports and aids her in her difficulties. In which the Author hints at the promises made to the aspirants on these occasions: - Nec Providentiæ bonæ graves oculos innocentis anima latuit ærumna. In her greatest distress, in the repetition of her first capital fault, she is relieved by Cupid himself; intimating, that nothing but the divine aid can overcome human weakness; as appears from these words of Cupid to his spouse-Et ecce, inquit, rursum perieras misella simili curiositate. Sed interim. quidem tu provinciam, quæ tibi matris meæ precepto mandata est, exequere gnaviter: cetera egomet videro*, When in these trials the aspirant had done his best, the Gods would help out the rest. With this assistance, she performs her penance, is pardoned, and restored to favour: put again into possession of DIVINE LOVE, and rewarded with IMMORTALITY, the declared end of all the MYSTERIES. There are many other circumstances in this fine Allegory equally serving to support the system here explained as there are oners which allude to divers beautiful Platonic notions, foreign to the present discourse. It is enough that we have pointed to its chief, and peculiar purpose; which it was impossible to see while the nature and design of the whole Fable lay undiscovered. But now perhaps it may be said, "That all this is very well. An Allegory is here found for the GOLDEN ASS, which, it must be owned, fits the Fable. But still it may be asked, Was it indeed made for it? Did the Author write the tale for the moral; or did the Critic find the moral for the tale? For an Allegory *P. 123. may may be drawn from almost any story: and they have been often made for Authors who never thought of them. Nay, when a rage of allegorizing happens to prevail, as it did a century or two ago, the Author himself will be either tempted or obliged, without the Commentater, to encourage this delusion. Ariosto and Tasso, writers of the highest reputation, one of whom wrote after the Gothic Romances, as the other, after the Classic Fables, without ever concerning themselves about any other moral than what the natural circumstances of the story conveyed; yet, to secure the success of their poems, they submitted, in compliance to fashion and false taste, to the ridiculous drudgery of inventing a kind of posthumous Allegory, and sometimes more than one; that the reader himself might season their Fables to his own taste." As this has been the case, To shew that I neither impose upon myself nor others, I have reserved the Author's own declaration of his having an Allegoric meaning, for the last confirmation of my system. It is in these words, At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio Varias Fabulas conseram, auresque tuas Modo si PAPYRUM ÆGYPTIAM ARGUTÍA A direct insinuation of its being replete with the profound Egyptian wisdom; of which, that Nation, by the invention of the MYSTERIES, had conveyed so considerable a part to the Greeks. * In init. Fab. Before |