Page:Ovid's Metamorphoses (Vol. 1) - tr Garth, Dryden, et. al. (1727).djvu/23

Rh The Fiat of the Hebrew Law-giver is not more sublime, than the Jussit of the Latin Poet, who goes on in the same elevated and Philosophical Style.

His super imposuit liquidum, & gravitate carentem Æthera

Here the Author spreads a thin Veil of Æther over his Infant Creation; and tho' his asserting the upper Region to be void of Gravitation, may not, in a mathematical Rigour, be true; yet 'tis found from the natural Enquiries made since, and especially from the learned Dr. Hally's Discourse on the Barometer, that if, on the Surface of the Earth, an Inch of Quicksilver in the Tube be equal to a Cylinder of Air of 300 Foot, it will be at a Mile's Height equal to a Cylinder of Air of 2700000: And therefore the Air at so great a Distance from the Earth, must be rarify'd to so great a Degree, that the Space it fills must bear a very small Proportion to that which is entirely void of Matter.

I think, we may be confident from what already appears, as well as from what our Author has writ on the Roman Feasts, that he cou'd not be totally ignorant of Astronomy. Some of the Criticks wou'd insinuate from the following Lines, that he mistook the annual Motion of the Sun for the Diurnal.

Tho'