PREFACE. THE Poem, which is here offered to the Public, does not pretend to inftruct by deep researches of reasoning; its aim is fimply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and fublime images of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progreffive course of time prefented them. The Deities of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece, and Rome, were derived from men famous in those early times, as in the ages of hunting, pafturage, and agriculture. The hiftories of fome of their actions recorded in Scripture, or celebrated in the heathen mythology, are introduced, as the Author hopes, without impropriety into his account of thofe remote periods of human fociety. In the Eleusinian myfteries the philofophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and pro |