KEIGHTLEY'S MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE AND ITALY.

THE origin of a national mythology, like the begipning of any thing else, is a subject upon which inquiry is abortive; the utmost that ingenuity can do, being to throw a twilight gleam upon tho obscurity of very ancient times by its researches, and in its speculations to evolve some truths relating to the human mind. The history of national religions is, however, a different matter. Knowing the nature and attributes which different people, at dif- ferent times, have assigned to their gods, the natural philosopher can in some measure estimate their advance n ph)sieal know- ledge; the politician may form an idea of the character of their government, from the character of their priesthood and the doe- trires they inculcate; whilst the historian has a singular spectacle for examination—perhaps the key to national existences, in the fact, that states perish with their old faiths. It is indee..1 a striking circumstance, and worthy of critical inquiry, that the national life seems bound up with the national belief, and that a pople cannot change their religion by the sub- stitution of one creed for another. A faith is first stripped of its grosser superstitions as the popular mind advances; its doctrines next receive some mein:leaden or allegorical interpretation ; till at last, with the spread of science, the dominance of mere reason, and the rejection of authorf;v, society is divided into confirmed infidels and indifferent sceptics, with a majority of the vulgar fear- ing through ignorance and habit, but scarcely believing. When a nation reaches this period, it is ripe for dissolution. Such is Turkey in Europe now, and per,liaps India ; such was Africa, and half of Asia on the irruption of MAHOMET ; such was the Roman empire soon after the aims nonce of Christianity ; and instead of GIBBON'S attributing the fa:I of the empire to the pro- gress of' the new faith, lie [night perhal.'s with more of truth have considered the spread of Christianity as a symptom of the era- pile's decline.

attempted, any thing

Mr. KEIGHTLIN has not achieved, or indeeo* ef this kind, in his Mythology of Greece and Italy ; but he has succeeded in giving a new and uniform charac:er to the subject.

lie has also imparted the interest of a contititteus narrative to what, in this country at least, has hitherto been a heap of fables arranged alphabetically, which the forgetful reader " loeked out"

when he encountered them. And Mr. KEIGHTLEN' has accom- plished these ends, without depriving the volume of its uses as a classical dictionary.

After a general view of Mythology,—in which be justly ascribes its origin to the ignorance of uncivilized man, inducing Atha to

assign intelligent agents to natural effects, and to an innate :lisp°. sition in the mind to give causes for results,—Mr. KEIGHTLEY investigates its different theories, and propounds rules fur the iii- terpretation of Mythes. He next gives a brief sketch of Grecian M) thology, in its (fancied) origin, its history, and its literature; the latter branch being little more than a list of porished and ex-

tant writers. Having thus introduced his subjt ct, our author fur- nishes a concise account of the Homeric and Ilesioilic notions of the creation and the origin of the gods ; as will as the knowledge of geography and the ideas of the world prevalent in those times. This naturally leads to the gods and goddesses themselves; whose

attributes, functions, characters, and exploits, are told with their history—that is to say, the gods are divided into classes according

to their antiquity and importance, beginning with the "eldest of thins," Night, and coming down to Nymphs and Heroes. A fur- ther and proper division is into domestic and foreign deities, or those which appear indigenous and those which were evidently imported from Egypt and Asia. These parts of the subject relate to Greece ; which gave to Rome its mythology as well as its fine arts. Of the religion of old Italy we know little. The few deities catalogued and described by Mr.

KEIGHTLEY, are of a much mare solid and respectable kind than any to be met with in Grecian mythology, even in its purer

period. But of the character of these indigenous gods we hardly know how much may have been changed in later days, as far as the popular feeling would permit. Of the early religion of Rome,

the Romans themselves knew little or nothing,—if there is any truth in the tale of Live,* that in the year of the City 571, the religious books of Numa were disoovered, by the discovery of his tewb, and burnt by the Prretur URBANUS, as tending to overturn the established religion.

For his general views of mythology, and for many hints as to the bearing and arrangement of his materials, Mr. KEIGHTLEY is indebted to the Germans. The materials themselves are, of course, derived from the classical authors ; whom he appears to have read with very close attention, and whose legends he abbreviates, or whose scattered views he collects, with very remarkable taste and skill. An example of this may be given from his description of

EARLY GREEK COSMOGRAPHY.

According to the ideas of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages, it would seem that the World was a hollow globe, divided into two equal portions by the flat disk of the Earth. The external shell of this globe is called by the poets brazen and iron, probably only to express its solidity. The superior hemisphere was named Heaven, the inferior one Tartaroe. Tile length of the diameter of the hollow sphere is given thus by Hesiod. It would take, he says, nine days for an anvil to fall from Heaven to Earth ; an equal space of time would be occu- pied by its fall from Earth to the bottom of fortatos. The luminaries which gave light to gods and men shed their radiance through all the interior of the upper hemisphere; while that of the inferior one was filled with eternal gloom aunt darkness, and its still air unmoved by any wind. The Earth occupied the centre of the World, in the form of a round flat disk, or rather cylinder, around which the ricer Ocean flowed. Hellas was probably regarded as the centre of the Earth; but the poets are silent on this point. They are equally so as to the exact central point, but probably viewed as such Olympos, the abode of the gods. In after lilacs, Delphi became the nave/ of the Earth. The Sea divided the terrestrial disk into two portions,

which we may suppose were regarded as equal. These divisions do not seem to have had any peculiar names in the time of Homer. The Northern one was afterwards named Europe ; the Southern, at first called Asia alone, was in pro- cess of time divided into Asia and Libya. The former comprised all the coun- try between the Phamis and the Nile, the latter all between this river and the Western Ocean.

In the Sea the Greeks appear to have known to the west of their own country Southern Italy and Sicily, though their ideas respecting them were probably

vague and uncertain ; and the imagination of the poets, or the tales of voyagers, had placed in the more remote parts of it several islands, such as Ogygia the isle of Calypso, Ewa that of Circe, 2Eolia that of Abdo, Scheria the abode of • XL. 29. The tale is circumstantially told ; but, admitting the facts, it is open to debate whether the finder of the books invented a fraud, or if not, whether he might have been deceived by one. Dr. AaxoLn seems inclined to credit the story.

the Phwacianth—islands, in all probability, as ideal and as fabulous as the isles of Panchaia, Lilliput or Brobdignsg, though both ancients and moderns have endeavoured to assign their exact positions. Along its Southern coast lay, it would appear, the countries of the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclopes, the Giants, and the Lwstrigoniaus. These isles and coasts of the Western part of the Sea were the scenes of most of the wonders of early Grecian fable. There, and on the isles of the Ocean, the passage to which was supposed to be close to the island of Circe, dwelt the Silens, the Hesperides, the Grtem, the Gorgons, and the other beings of fable. The only inhabitants of the Northern portion of the Earth mentioned by Homer, are the HeHermes and some of the tribes of Thrace. But Hesiod sang of a happy race, named the Hyperboreans, dwelling in everlasting bliss and spring beyond the lofty mountains, whose caverns were supposed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north wind, which chilled the people of Hellas. Ac- cording to Pinder, the country of the Hyperboreans, iron which the river later flowed, was inaccessible either by sea or land. Apollo WdS their tutelar deity, to whom they offered asses in sacrifice, while choirs of maidens danced to the sound of lyres and pipes, and the worshippers feasted, haying their beads wreathed with garlands of the god's favourite plant, the bay. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare, and, conscious of no evil thoughts or acts, they had not to fear the awful goddess Nemesis.

With so much good sense as Mr. KEIGHTLEV displays, we regret that he should have descended to a pedantry only fit for smattering sciolists, whose raw knowledge extends no fur- ther than spelling, and that not always exact. He invariably "employs the Greek termination or and on in mythic names, in- stead of the Latin us and um;" he also adopts other modes of spel- ling, which form a " Babylonish dialect of neither Greek nor English ; neither does he always adhere to his own rules, for lie might just as well write " Kyclopes" for Cyclopes. as " Kimme- !ions " for Cimmerians. He even wishes that "alt Greek names should be so written as that they might be at once transferred to the original Greek characters ;' which would, so far as it ex- tended, barbarize our tongue. Languages, when they adopt a word, subject it to their own laws ; the Greeks did so, the Romans did so, and we do so ; because by this means alone can the appear- ance of homogeneity be given to a tongue, certain to have una- voidable anomalies. Think of the work that would be made with the King's English if such a ridiculous suggestion were fully fol- lowed out : if we personified "old Ocean," we must call him Mean.

The copy of the work which has invited our remarks, is a second edition ; but so extended as to be entirely rewritten, and in fact made new. The preface is rather interesting from its autobiogra- phical character, arid cheering from the success which seems attending Mr. KEIGHTLEV'S labours. He, however, is one of the authors who favour Sergeant TALFOURD'S views of copyright; though his facts (for there are no arguments) seem to tell against himself. After assuming the right of an author to perpetual copyright, and talking a little nonsense, as we cannot help think- ing it, upon the analogies of the case, he thus proceeds- " 1 ails far, however, from expecting that full justice will be done us by the Legislature. We are a small and a dimmuited party. It cannot be said of us

'I I ic multum in Faiths valet, tile Velina ; Coil ib, t is faces dabit eiipietque eurulo Importunius ebur.

Our enemies are numerous ; the booksellers have caused printers, bookbinder., etceteri, to petition ngaiust us; the newspaper press is, with a few honourable exceptions, arrayed against us ; the political economists, who will sacrifice any thing, how sacred aoever, on the altar of their idol misnamed Utility, are op- posed to us; and the diffusion of knowledge, the march of intellect, the public good, and similar specious phrases, enable legislators to perpetuate injustice under the show of patriotism and public spirit.

"I do not think that the great publishing houses can be properly clamed among our opponents. They have uo objection to the extension of the period of copy. right, provided the author be empowered to nansfer all his rights to thrin, and that any extension of the term of those copyrights Vihich they have purchased should go to them also, and not to the author. Theirs, indeed, is but too often the lion's share, as I know by my own experience. For the Outlines of His. tory,' in Lardnir's Cyclopedia, I received only 1301. ; and, if I inn notgreatly misinformed, that sum bears little proportion to what the proprietors have already made by it, and the copyright has yet twenty years to run. I applied in vain for sonie smali share in the gain ; it was contrary, I was tlul, to the rules of trade. Nay, when they wanted nie to write another %yolk, likely to be as popular, they said they could not afford to give more than 1501. 1 mention these facts not out of ill.will to the proprietors, some of whom n are the pub- lishers of most of my other works, but simply to let the world see how inade- quate is the remuneration sometimes received by the authors of even the most suece,sful woiks.

" I would say then, as the publishers say they would not give more fora long than for a short term of copyright, let the public be the gainer ; and if an author has parted or mmill,part with his copyright, let it become common pro- perty at the end of his 1.e. or of the twenty-eight years. Otherwise the great publishers will be almost the only gainers by a change in the law ; for most authors u-ill transfer to them all their rights if they have the power to do it. " For my own part, I view the question with tolerable indifference, as even under the present law I know how to extend my copyright. My books, thank Heaven and the liberality of the gentlemen at whose uifiee they are printed,* are my own. When the booksellers had refused the present work, they enabled me to give it to the world, and thus lay the foundation of a moderate indepen- deuce ; and in that our first transaction originated a friendship which nothing, I am confident, will dissolve but that event which terminates all human rela- tions."

Surely, if the majority of authors " will transfer to the great publishers all their rights if they have the power to du it," whilst those few who, like Mr. KEIGHTLEV, retain theirs, can "know how to extend their copyright," it is better to bear the ills we have, than tempt an uncertain future.

• Richard and John E. Teiur, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.