impression upon the mind, cannot be better expressed than in that remarkable description with which they inspired the German editor, Eschenbach, when he accidentally met with them at Leipsic: --'Thesaurum me reperisse credidi,' says he, 'et profecto thesaurum reperi. Incredibile dictu quo me sacro horrore afflaverint indigitamenta ista deorum: nam et tempus ad illorum lectionem eligere cogebar, quod vel solum horrorem incutere animo potest, nocturnum; cum enim totam diem consumserim in contemplando urbis splendore, et in adeundis, quibus scatet urbs illa, viris doctis; sola nox restabat, quam Orpheo consecrare potui. In abyesum quendam mysteriorum venerandae antiquitatis descendere videbar, quotiescunque silente mundo, solis vigilantibus astris et luna, [Greek: melanaephutous] istos hymnos ad manus sumsi.'] [Footnote B: '_Love, the sire of Fate_.'--L. 25. Fate is the universal system of natural causes; the work of the Omnipotent Mind, or of Love: so Minucius Felix:--'Quid enim aliud est fatum, quam quod de unoquoque nostrum deus fatus est.' So also Cicero, in the First Book on Divination:--'Fatum autem id appello, quod Graeci EIMAPMENIIN: id est, ordinem seriemque causarum, cum causa causae nexa rem ex se gignat--ex quo intelligitur, ut fatum sit non id quod superstitiose, sed id quod physice dicitur causa asterna rerum.' To the same purpose is the doctrine of Hierocles, in that excellent fragment concerning Providence and Destiny. As to the three Fates, or Destinies of the poets, they represented that part of the general system of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings: for so we are told in the hymn addressed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night (or Love), and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are distinguished by the epithets of gentle and tender-hearted. According to Hesiod, Theog. ver. 904, they were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis: but in the Orphic hymn to Venus, or Love, that goddess is directly styled the mother of Necessity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Destinies, and conducting the whole system of natural causes.] [Footnote C: '_Chaos_.'--L. 26. The unformed, undigested mass of Moses and Plato; which Milton calls 'The womb of nature.'] [Footnote D: '_Born of Fate was Time_.'--L. 26. Chronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Caelum and Tellus. But the author of the hymns gives it quite undisguised by mythological language, and calls him plainly the offspring of the earth and the starry heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note.] [Footnote E: '_Who many sons ... devour'd_.'--L. 27. The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the dissolution of natural bodies, which are produced and destroyed by Time.] [Footnote F: '_The Child of Rhea_.'-L. 29. Jupiter, so called by Pindar.]