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Fig. 143,

exhibits an outline of the Province of Normandy, including the district of the Cotentin. Its resemblance to the common hieroglyphic Sphynx is most striking; its head formed like a woman's by the Cotentin itself, its fore feet by the coast about St. Maloes, its body by the Province of Normandy, and its tail by the River Seine, marked in fig. 143 (-----,) and as that fictitious animal is supposed to have had the body of a dog, so, about the centre of the body of the prototype of this figure (marked in fig. 143,) is situate the city of Caen, (canis, xuwv,) the capital of the province; but what is more to my present purpose, is, to observe that there are three remarkable places situate within the geographical space pointed out, which have names severally approaching in sound to the names of those animals above

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mentioned: they are first, Cape la Hogue, (Hog,) on the east side of the Cotentin, (marked - in fig. 143;) second, Cape la Hague, (Hawk,) at the north western point of the same, (marked in the figure;) and the third, the Haquet Bank, (the hacket and the hake being the same fish,) situate at Cancalle Bay, in the same district, near the feet of the Sphynx, and marked in figure 143. The reader may, further, even trace resemblances to those animals themselves in the Haquet Bank, and at the points above mentioned; and on the whole may have good reason to suspect, that there is still another subject veiled under the Tragedy of dipus Tyrannus, the characters of which may be found nearer home than those which, in the preceding explanation, have been fetched from the moon. I just call his attention to this matter without entering upon any elucidation of it at present, further than by observing, that if he will run his eye over the play again, he can scarcely fail, now that this matter is even thus slightly opened to him, to see there a variety of allusions to English names, which I have suffered to pass unnoticed; but he must not be discouraged if he finds those allusions common, trite, or even vulgar, as for instance, to the names of hog and (its synonyme) sow, by oy, and 58, and

the like. I mention this in particular, as being introductory to the observations, that the word 58 in the third line of the other riddle, at the head of the play, contains an allusion to its synonyme hog, and thereby to the district of La Hogue; and that as Beoto, BeoTwv, &c. (in the play passim,) has relation to the country of the Nor-mans, so has Adis in the riddle, either (as from Adös, lapis,) to the Alps and Pyrenees which border France, or to Louis, the common name from time immemorial of the kings of France, and (though I scarcely dare mention it,) so has Aadanion in the riddle, and Ʌadanaia in the play, to the Land of Lap-dogs, (France,) which, or Normandy in particular, constitutes the principal scene in the other meaning of the play. But (to return once more to my proper subject, at present, as regarding the moon, and in particular in respect of this other riddle,) it is commonly called the answer by the oracle, to Laius; and as Laius's death is thereby announced, and that he is to fall by the hands of his own son, this is to be understood in the same manner as the death, or extinction, of Laius in the play, as put to death by his son Edipus; that is, that the side, or quarter, of the moon on which Laïus lies, becomes obscured, or, involved in the shades of death; while the other

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side, by its counter-libration (Xeigeσσaidos) be comes illumined in its turn, when Laius's quarter be said to leave the light to it, (ATEN Pαos). The riddle's being an answer of the oracle, (and it may be presumed to be the oracle of Apollo in particular, from his being so very often mentioned in the play,) intimates that these alternate phenomena are derived ultimately from the sun, from which the moon borrows all the light she has,

MILTON'S

ALLEGRO.

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