There is, however, another department in which the labours of Heyne are more original, and in which he merits all the honour to which a discoverer is entitled. Until the middle of the eighteenth cen tury, mythology was nothing else than the nomen clature of divinities, a collection of the manifold and discordant legends of their several relations, actions, and destinies, and the delineation of their forms from the works of the poets and artists, illustrated, perhaps, by a mystical and allegorical commentary. About this period some profounder thinkers began to regard the mythical traditions in a higher view, as sources of hu man history ; but from too confined an acquaint ance with the circumstances and condition of the ancient world, they took too high a standard for their explanations, and through a mystical and allegorical . interpretation, thinking they had discovered under the veil of mythological narration, ideas of the deep est wisdom, they confidently framed thereon hypo theses for the history of mankind, for the arts, for philosophy and the other sciences, which threat ened altogether to extinguish the glimmering light that was still afforded us for the periods of remote antiquity.
Heyne opened a less ambitious but more certain path. Following the observations which travellers had collected in regard to new and uncivilized nations, he applied these to the condition of the Greeks, who, as history informs us, from a rude and sensual barbarism, gradually advanced to a state of civilisation and intellectual refine ment. He thus arrived at the simple conclusion, that the mythical tales of antiquity contain the first attempts at reasoning, the most ancient history, philosophy, and theology embodied in a poor, un formed, and consequently figurative language; and, therefore, that mythology is a system comprising, partly the original form of representation through ob jects of sense peculiar to a rude age, expressed in fa bles, ceremonies, and monuments, transplanted into later times; partly a kind of poetical apparatus derived and formed from this original mythology, and in tended only by its authors for the purposes of poe tical effect. He hence justly concluded that it is
impossible to attain any real insight into the nature of mythical narration, unless the mythi of the most ancient poets are carefully distinguished from the abu sive applications made of them in the poetry of after times, and unless mythology be kept separate from the philosophy conversant about mythology. In conformity with these fundamental rules, Heyne has illustrated Apollodorus, and in the same spirit he has conducted those researches into the nature and tendency of the different mythi of Greece, which he has published in the Transactions of the Royal So ciety of Maur:. His views have been almost universally admitted to be correct in principle, and his applications to have been conducted with the profoundest learning, and almost unequalled in genuity. A great number of followers have pursued the path he opened, and his theory has now attain ed the form and stability of a system through the labours of his disciples. Among these the names of Martin Hermann (not the philologer), of Voss, and of Manso, are especially to be distinguished. The theologians of Germany have likewise applied the same theory to the interpretation of the Sacred Books ; and the researches of Eichhorn, Bauer, !I gen, Hartmann, Vater, De Wette, and of a host of other philosophical divines, into the pretended biblical mythi, have been pursued with a learning and acute ness equalled only by the impious audacity of their conclusions.