MYTHOLOGY, the history of the fabu. Ions gods and heroes of antiquity, with the explanations of the mysteries or al legories coached therein. Lord Bacon thinks, that a great deal of concealed in struction and allegory was originally in tended in most part of the ancient my thology : he observes, that some fables discover a great and evident similitude, relation, and connexion, with the thing they signify, as well in the structure of the fable, as in the meaning of the names, whereby the persons or actors are characterized.
The same writer thinks it may pass for a further indication of a concealed and se cret meaning, that some of these fables are so absurd and idle in their narration, as to show an allegory even afar off: but the argument of most weight upon this subject he takes to be this, that many of these fables appear by no means to have been invented by the persons who relate them : he looks on them, not as the pro duct of the age, nor invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, as he terms them, gentle whispers, and the breath of better times, that from the tradition of more an cient nations earnest length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks. He con
cludes, that the knowledge of the early ages was either great or happy : great, if they by design made this use of trope and figure; or happy, if, whilst they had other n, the thirteenth letter, and s) tenth consonant of our alphabet: it is a liquid, the sound of which is formed by forcing the voice strongly through the mouth and nostrils ; being at the same time intercepted by applying the tip of the tongue to the fore-part of the palate, with the lips open. It suffers no consonant immediately after it in the beginning of words and syllables ; nor any before it, except g, k, and ; as in gnaw, know, mow, &c.: as a numeral, N stands for 900 ; and with a dash over it, thus Si, for 900,000 ; N, or stands for numero, i. e. in number ; and N. B. for nota bene, note well, or observe well.