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was religious, without being conscious that he was surrounded with things supernatural; and thus his religion, though full of beautiful forms, was a different thing to him from what it is to us. The nymph was lovely and beneficent; she took care of her brook or her grove for the agriculturist, and he humbly assisted her in his turn and presented her with flowers; and yet a sight of her was supposed to occasion a particular species of madness, thence called Nympholepsy. A living writer,* who has a young heart, has founded a pastoral drama upon it. We are informed, by a native of the Ionian Isles,† that to this day a peasant there cannot be persuaded to venture out of his cottage at noonday during the month of July, on account of the fairies whom he calls Aneraides, i.e., Nereids. The truth is, that in this instance, as in that of the modern fairies, he who thought he beheld any thing supernatural was in a fair way of being delirious beforehand.

It was otherwise with the great or "initiated." Poets talked of seeing the nymphs, and the gods too, without any harm, not excepting Bacchus, the most awful vision of them all; and multitudes of heroes were descended and received favors from enamoured Dryads and Naiads. The old poets have a favorite phrase to denote these condescending amours. § The use of the fiction was obvious; nor was it confined to the maternal side of ancient heraldry. There is a story of a girl, who, having been honored with

* See "Amarynthus, or the Nympholept." By Mr. Horace Smith. † Ugo Foscolo, in his criticism in the "Quarterly Review," upon the "Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians," vol. 21, p. 514.

Cospetto di Bacco (Face of Bacchus) is still an oath among the Italians. § In the Homeric account of Venus's amours with Anchises, the goddess enjoins the hero, in case he is asked questions about their child, to say that a nymph was his mother; but on no account was he to dare to say it was Venus.

the attentions of the river Scamander, observed him one day standing in a crowd at a public festival; upon which the divinity was taken up and carried before the magis

trate.

We shall give a list of the principal nymphs and their names; partly, because the genuine reader, who does not happen to be learned, will be glad of it, and partly on account of the beauty of the nomenclature. These were the Nereids, or nymphs of the sea, daughters of Nereus: Oreads, or nymphs of the mountains; Naiads, or nymphs of the streams; Dryads, or nymphs of the woods; and Hamadryads, or nymphs of trees by themselves; nymphs who were born and died each with her particular tree.

Those were the principal; but we also hear of the Limnads or Limniads, nymphs of the lakes; Potamèdes, or nymphs of the rivers; Ephydriads, or nymphs of the fountains; Napèæ, nymphs of the woody glens and meadows ; and Mèliæ, nymphs of the honey-making.

But these specific appellations, we suppose, were given at will. There are furthermore the Bacchantes, or nymphs of Bacchus; the Hesperides, or daughters of Hesperus,

"Who sing about the Golden Tree, "

the nymphs who waited upon the deities in general; the celestial Sirens, who sat upon the spheres; and some reckon among them, the Graces and the Muses.

Aristophanes, in one of his plays, has introduced a chorus of clouds; and, though the singers appear to be the clouds themselves and not deities conducting them, it seems remarkable that an incarnation of those fair and benignant travellers through heaven escaped the fertile imagination of the Greeks.

All these nymphs passed a happy and graceful life of

mingled duty and pleasure, and evinced their benignity to mankind after their respective fashions:- the Nereids in assisting men at sea, and allaying the billows; the Oreads in assisting hunters; the Naiads or Dryads in taking care of the streams and woods; and so on of the rest. They danced and bathed, and made love and played among the trees, and sat tying up their hair by the waters. As they were kind, they expected kindness, and were grateful for it. If their worshippers represented them as severe in their resentments, it was in punishment of what was thought impious; and there is always some inconsistency in those personifications of the natural reaction of error.

Such was the life led by the nymphs of old, and such is the one they lead still, even in quarters where they would not be expected; so native are they to the regions of poetry, that they will divide them with other mythologies rather than remove. It is as well to keep the latter distinct, though our old poets, in the interior of their philosophy, would have had much to say for uniting them. At all events, there they are all together in the pages of Spenser, as we shall presently see. Even Milton contrived not to let them go; and Camoens, like a right sailor, finds them in every port.

We proceed to the different classes separately, and to touch upon what the poets have said of them. And, in the first place, as personal matters are as important to them as to other ladies, and the sea-nymphs got Neptune to send a whale against Queen Cassiopeia for pretending to be their equal in beauty, it is to be observed, as a caution to men at sea, that nobody must speak ill of green hair-such being the tresses of the Nereids. For our part, who are great readers of the poets, we make no scruple to

say that we can fancy green mossy locks well enough, provided there is a sweet face under them. The painters have seldom ventured upon these anomalies; but the poets, whose especial business it is to have an universal sympathy, can fancy the sea-nymphs with their verdant locks, and even in the midst of their faint-smelling and stormechoing bowers, and love them no less. Good offices and a robust power of enjoyment make the Nereid beautiful. She grapples with the waves and flings aside her hair from her soused cheeks; and the poet is willing to be a Triton for her sake. The most beautiful figure ever made by the nymphs as a body, is by these very sisters, in the Prometheus of Eschylus, where they come to console the stern demi-god in his sufferings. But as the scene is rather characteristic of them as cordial and pious females, than creatures of their particular class, it is here (with great unwillingness) omitted. A late admirable writer thought his contemporaries defective in imagination for not making the nymphs partake thoroughly of the nature of the element they lived in. He would have had a Dryad, for instance, as rugged and fantastic in her aspect as an old oak-tree, and divested of all human beauty. The ancients did not go so far as this. Beauty, in a human shape, was a sine quâ non with those cultivators of physical grace, in their most supernatural fancies; and the world have approved their taste, and retained the charming population with which they filled the woods and waters; but the poet, whenever he chooses, can still know how to make a "difference discreet." The Nereids lived in grottos on the sea-shore, as well as in bowers under water. They were fond of feeding the Halcyon; and sported and revelled, says the old poet, like so many joyous fish about the chariot of the sea-god. We are to suppose them diving

underneath it from one another, and careering about it as it ran; splashing each other and their lovers with the sunny waters. Ben Jonson has painted them and their father in a jovial line :

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Homer, Hesiod, and Spenser have given lists of their names. The list of the English poet seems the best, because he has added descriptive epithets; - but these were unnecessary in the Greek, the names themselves being descriptions. This reconciles us to the dry look of the lists in the Greek poet, and explains the apparent arbitrariness of those in the English one; though even if the epithets of the latter had not been translations, or taken from other epithets bestowed upon them by his authorities, they would have had a good effect. They give a distinction to the individuals, — a character, as they pass by, to their faces and bearing.

"Swift Proto, mild Eucrate, Thetis faire,

Soft Spio, sweet Eudorè, Sao sad,

Light Doto, wanton Glancè, and Galenè glad:
White-handed Eunica, proud Dynamene,

Joyous Thalia, goodly Amphitrite,

Lovely Pasithee, kinde Eulimene,

Light-foote Cymothoe, and sweet Melitè;

Fairest Pherusa, Phao lilly white," &c.

Among the rest are "milke-white Galathæa, large Lisianassa, stout Autonoe,

"And, seeming still to smile, Glauconome;
Fresh Alimeda, deckt with girlond greene;
Hyponoe, with salt-bedewed wrests;
Laomedia, like the christall sheene;

Liagore, much praised for wise behests;

And Psamathe for her brode snowy brests."

The intellectual and moral epithets do not seem so

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