We are obliged to the Poets for this Patagonian System. Their Fictions of Titan and Briareus, and the whole Fraternity of Giants, is a Fable which conveys a Moral: The Giants, upon attempting to scale the Walls of Heaven by heaping Mountains one upon another, are repelled by Jupiter's Thunder, made Prisoners, and bound under those Mountains upon which they made the Attempt. The Moral of the Fable is only this, that it is impossible for any Force to oppose the Omnipotent. Not to dispute whether the Ancients were of Opinion, that at the Creation of the World all the Animals were of a gigantic Size, or what might be their Sentiments about that Matter; it is certain that there has been an Opinion among Men, in all Ages, that the Time in which they themselves lived, produced Men of less Stature than those who
lived some Time before them. This is a Persuasion which the Poets all encouraged, as it suited their Purpose; nothing being so great an Enchantment, to the Mind of a poetical Reader, as to be struck with the Marvellous.
When Virgil makes Turnus throw a large Stone at Æneas, he tells us, that it was such a Stone as twelve Men of his degenerate Age could scarce have carried upon their Shoulders.
Nec plura effatus, saxum circumspicit ingens:
Saxum antiquum ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
Limes agro positus litem ut discerneret arvis.
Vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent,
Qualia nunc hominum producit corpora tellus.
A Person who reads this Passage, and really believes that Men were larger in Æneas' Time than in Virgil's, reasons thus with himself: "The Works of Nature
degenerate: Those who lived in Æneas's Time, were larger than those who lived in Virgil's; and those who lived in the Time of Virgil, were larger than those who live now."