Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles,
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay

ence to the moon I do not now stop to enquire; but as to the play of "As you like it," from whence the preceding quotation was taken, it would be erroneous to believe, because the seven ages of man there described, are referable to the characters in the moon, that the other parts of that play might have the like account given of the Dramatis Personæ.-The mention of this fact is all that is intended at present, without giving here any further explanation of that play.

So again, because two or three examples are offered in the preceding volumes wherein the explanations of certain fables of Æsop are drawn in the like manner from the moon, it might be equally erroneous to conceive that all of them are to be explained by a like reference: at any rate other fields searched for additional and more popular explanations of some of them. For instance, though considering what was said of Mount Citharon

The unadorned bosom of the deep,
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,

are to be (fig. 131,) in treating of the play of Edipus Tyrannus and of the mouse (fig. 45,) in treating ante of the elephant in the moon, (the prototype of which mouse and of the mount may be found contiguous to each other in the moon,) there may be some reason for borrowing one explanation of the well-known fable of "the mountain in labour" from the disk of the moon; yet if, on the other hand, we consider the resemblance which the drawing in (fig. 179,) of the rock or mountain of Gibraltar bears to a mouse, I think there can be no hesitation in believing that that famous rock offers another collateral explanation of the fable.

Fig. 179.

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By course commits to several government,
And gives them leave to wear their saphir crowns,

This figure (179) is a copy, on a reduced scale, of the drawing givenof the rock in "Bourgoanne's Travels in Spain, vol. 2. p. 453;" and if it differ in some degree from the common delineations of Gibraltar, it must be recollected that these last are generally taken from the sea or the sea-shore, whereas it appears by the following account given by the author himself just now cited that his drawing, here copied, exhibits a sort of bird's-eye view of it, by which its parts would be elevated and more projected into each other. "The four last leagues (in advancing towards Gibraltar through the Duchy of Medina Sidonia) are excessively fatiguing and even dangerous in some places. However the traveller is well rewarded for his pains, when, from the summit of the mountain, a league and a half from the bay, he perceives the famous rock of Gibraltar, rising from the bosom of the waves like the genius of the stormy cape, which furnished to Camoens one of the finest episodes in his Lusiad."

And wield their little tridents; but this isle,
The greatest and the best of all the main,

So again, to speak of the highly beautiful romance of Robinson Crusoe, if we refer the hero of it to the same prototype as that of Hudibras, or rather to that of Hamlet when transformed and dressed in sables (fig. 66), we shall not be at a loss to find in the moon the likeness of his ship as in a storm (fig. 72), or as a wreck; his parrot (the bird on Ralph, fig. 12), his dog, fig. 13; his cat, as formed by the streaks of light on his shoulder, and as pointed out in a former note; his two muskets, one terminating in the head of the boy flying a kite, fig. 35, and the other in that of the steward in King Lear, fig. 87; his bag of corn (fig. 6), the grains of corn being the round spots of light scattered around him; his goat, fig. 103; his knotched stick, by which he counted the time, in the prototype of Talgol's sword, fig. 17, marked, as it were, with spots or knotches; while in the prototype of Ralph in Hudibras, we have that of his man Friday, the shadow belonging to which prototype

He quarters to his blue-hair'd deities;

And all this tract that fronts the falling sun

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be

of the shape of a foot (being the same that composed the foot of Edipus, and the soale of Shylock's shoe), was the foundation of that supremely beautiful incident regarding the impression of Friday's foot in the sands: to which it may added, that the very name of Friday is composed by some of the same lights (together with their adjoining lights, particularly the initial F,) as those which composed the name of Ralph, figs. 9, 10; Robinson Crusoe's being thrown alone upon an uninhabited island, will be perfectly analogous to the solitude of the man in the moon; his name, Robinson, being referable to the moon's having no light of which she does not rob the sun, and Crusoe (Xevos, gold), to her golden colour. To the particulars above mentioned, great numbers might be added, as having their origin in the various pictures exhibited by the moon, of which I will only instance one more, namely, that of Friday's dancing the bear, (fig. 13,)