Gleanings of antiquities / By John Beaumont, Gent.

  • Beaumont, John, -1731.
Date:
1724
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gleanings of antiquities / By John Beaumont, Gent. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    117/226 (page 105)
    in what they write, and, as tho* they were doing another thing, hint to the Learned and Studious* wonderful Secrets, or Arcana of Natural and Divine Things. If we look on Virgil's Georgicks, we fhall find many Paffages there, which (flow him to be acquainted in the Spiritual Death and New Birth. Near the be^ ginning of his firft Georgick, after he has faid to An-* gufltis, that the World was in great Expectation of him, whether he wotdd make himfelf famous by Sea, or by Land, or become a Gonftellation in the Hea¬ vens, he writes thus: Quicquid eris (nam te nec fperent Tartar a Regentt Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido ; Quamvis Elyfios miretur Gracia Campos, Nec repet it a jequi caret Proferpina matrem) Dafacilem curfumy &c. Whatever you'll he (for Hell ne'er hopes you Kingt Nor fo feek Rule to wi/h fo direful thing 1 Tdho' Greece admires thy Elyfian Fields, nor was Proferpinq fond with Ceres thence to pafs) Vouchfafe your Favour Now thefe Verfes manifeftly fhow, that fome SF hyl had led Virgil through the fubterraneous Re¬ gions, as the Sibyl had carried JEneasy and other Heroes, thither ; (for as our learned Sanford obfenres3 in his Work, De Defcenfu Chrifti ad Inferos, Lib„ 2. prope finem. No great Man occurs in the Poets, hut he fome time defended into Hell) and that he had a free Intercourfe to the Elyfian Fields, otherwife he could not have told Augufflus that the Greeks admired thofe Fields, nor know why thofe Fields were admired by them, nor why Proferpine was fo well pleafed. with Plato's Habitation, that file carki not to return upon •the Earth, when her Mother Ceres came to fetch her; P