“Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum; Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram, Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.”[34] _Met._ i. 88. ----- Footnote 34: The poet gives a whimsical account of the first formation of man, out of this earth, which is represented as being then new; and, having been recently separated from the high æther, is therefore supposed as yet holding some affinity with heaven, and retaining its seeds. He describes the son of Japetus (Prometheus) moulding a portion of earth, mixed with river-water, into the similitude of those heathen deities, who were said to rule over all things. A poetic translation into our own language, of the lines above quoted, which exhibit “the godlike image,” thus formed, after its being animated by the stolen fire of Prometheus, is comprehended in the _italicised_ lines of the following passage, extracted from Mr. Dryden’s versification of the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; in which the English poet has well preserved the beauty, the force, and the sublimity of the thought, so finely expressed in the original:— “A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and then was _Man_ design’d Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast, For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest: Whether with particles of heav’nly fire The God of nature did his soul inspire; Or earth, but now divided from the sky, And pliant still, retain’d th’ ætherial energy: Which wise _Prometheus_ temper’d into paste, And, mixt with living streams, _the godlike image cast_: _Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies_.” ----- Mr. Pope has well observed, that— “The proper study of mankind, is Man:”—