ese gods, and he called him [Greek: ZEUS], or _Jupiter_; as the
pagans named this power formerly. According to him, the stars had a
soul; the demons were not malignant spirits; and the world was eternal.
He established polygamy, and was even inclined to a community of women.
All his work was filled with such reveries, and, with not a few
impieties, which my pious author has not ventured to give.

What were the intentions of Pletho? If the work was only an arranged
system of paganism, or the platonic philosophy, it might have been an
innocent, if not a curious volume. He was learned and humane, and had
not passed his life entirely in the solitary recesses of his study.

To strain human curiosity to the utmost limits of human credibility, a
_modern Pletho_ has risen in Mr. _Thomas Taylor_, who, consonant to the
platonic philosophy in the present day, religiously professes
_polytheism_! At the close of the eighteenth century, be it recorded,
were published many volumes, in which the author affects to avow himself
a zealous Platonist, and asserts that he can prove that the Christian
religion is "a bastardized and barbarous Platonism." The divinities of
Plato are the divinities to be adored, and we are to be taught to call
God, Jupiter; the Virgin, Venus; and Christ, Cupid! The Iliad of Homer
allegorised, is converted into a Greek bible of the arcana of nature!
Extraordinary as this literary lunacy may appear, we must observe, that
it stands not singular in the annals of the history of the human mind.
The Florentine Academy, which Cosmo founded, had, no doubt, some
classical enthusiasts; but who, perhaps, according to the political
character of their country, were prudent and reserved. The platonic
furor, however, appears to have reached other countries. In the reign of
Louis XII., a scholar named Hemon de la Fosse, a native of Abbeville, by
continually reading the Greek and Latin writers, became mad enough to
persuade himself that it was impossible that the religion of such great
geniuses as Homer, Cicero, and Virgil was a false one. On the 25th of
August, 1503, being at church, he suddenly snatched the host from the
hands of the priest, at the moment it was raised, exclaiming--"What!
always this folly!" He was immediately seized. In the hope that he would
abjure his extravagant errors, they delayed his punishment; but no
exhortation or entreaties availed. He persisted in maintaining that
Jupiter was the sovereign God of th