are obliged once more to call on their old friend Acestes at Drěpănum, who expressed much joy at their return, and joined ÆNEAS in instituting funeral games, in honour of his father Anchises, who was buried there.

While these sports were celebrating, which consisted of rowing-matches, foot-races, shooting with bows, boxing with the cæstus, and the Trojanum agmen, or Ascanius' trained bands, Juno fent Iris * to perfuade the Trojan women to burn the ships, who, tired with wandering, at her instigation, set fire to them, which entirely destroyed four, and would have confumed the rest, had not Jupiter, by a miraculous shower, extinguished it. Upon this ÆNEAS, at the advice of one of the generals, and a vision of his father, built a town for the women, old men, and others, who were either unfit for war, or weary of the voyage, and fet fail for Italy. Venus procured of Neptune a fafe voyage for him, and all his men, excepting only his pilot Palinurus, who, vanquished by Morpheus, the god of fleep, unfortunately fell over-board and was drowned.

They now passed the dangerous rocks of the Syrens, and landed foon after on the Cumean coaft.

ÆNEAS, immediately on their landing, set out for Cuma, where he is introduced to the Sybil, in the dark recess of Apollo's temple, by her priestess Deiphobe, with whom he confults concerning the farther progress of his voyage. She informed him, that the Fates had destined him to undergo greater hardships than any he had yet met with; adding, that he would shortly have horrid wars in Italy. As to visiting the infernal re

* IRIS, or the genius of the rainbow, was the daughter of Thaumas, or Admiration. The poets speak of her as handfome and well-dressed. They make her the messenger of Juno, as Triton was of Neptune, or Mercury of Jupiter. She has wings to shew her dispatch. She is described with a zone, which has all the beautiful colours we so much admire in the rainbow.

gions, gions, she told him, he must first procure a certain golden bough for a passport, and present to Proferpina, queen of hell: and, also, bury his friend, who then lay dead in his fleet.

After ÆNEAS had received this answer from the Sybil, he returned to his ships, and found his trumpeter, Misēnus, the son of Eolus, had been drowned by Triton for contending with him *; and, in assisting to get wood for his funeral pile in the neighbouring groves, two of Venus' doves guided ÆNEAS to the golden branch; with which, after paying the last rites to Misenus, and sacrificing, he defcended with the Sybil into hell, through the lake Avernus, between his fleet and the city Cuma. + At the en

* This accident gave the name of Port Misenus to this place ; at this day it is called Monte Miseno.

+ At hell's dread mouth a thousand monsters wait ;
Grief weeps, and Vengeance bellows in the gate :
Base Want, low Fear, and Famine's lawless rage,
And pale Disease, and flow repining Age;
Fierce, formidable fiends!-the portal keep;
With Pain, Toil, Death's half-brother Sleep.
There Joys embitter'd with Remorse appear;
Daughters of Guilt! here storms destructive War.
Mad Discord there her snaky tresses tore;
Here, stretch'd on iron beds, the Furies roar.
Full in the midst a spreading elm display'd
His aged arms, and cast a mighty shade;
Each trembling leaf with some light vision teems,
And heaves, impregnated with airy dreams.
With double form each Scylla took her place
In hell's dark entrance, with the Centaur's race ;
And close by Lerna's hissing monster, stands
Briareus dreadful with a hundred hands.
There stern Geryon rag'd; and, all around,
Fierce Harpies scream'd, and direful Gorgons frown'd.
VIRG. Æn. vi. 385. PITT.

Milton seems to have carried the description of the monsters in hell farther than any poet whatever.

where nature breeds

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable; and worse

Than fables yet have feign'd or fear conceiv'd,

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

trance of which he beheld, first, those beings which make the real miseries of mankind upon earth; fuch as War, Discord, Labour, Grief, Cares, Distempers, and Old Age; secondly, the terrors of fancy, and all the most frightful creatures of our imagination, as the GORGON with snaky hair; the double-fhaped CENTAUR and SCYLLA ; the HARPY with a woman's face, and a lion's talons; the seven-headed HYDRA; GERYON, with his three human heads; BRIAREUS with many hands; and the CIMERA, which breathes forth a flame, and is a compound of three animals. And on the banks of the rivers Acheron and Cocytus, he faw the ghosts of the departed, begging the infernal ferryman, Charon, for a passage over; among whom were Orontes, and Palinurus, who intreat ÆNEAS to cause them to be buried, without which they were not allowed to pass the Stygian lake, 'till they had wandered a hundred years on those dreary banks *.

Charon, seeing a man in armour approach him, at first, proved very furly, faying, in an angry tone, that none but the fouls of the dead are to pass over the river; but on fight of the golden bough, shewn him by the Sybil, he is appeased, and at last admitted ÆNEAS with his companion into his boat, and ferries them over to the other shore. No fooner are they passed this fatal river, than they approach the gate to the kingdom of PLUTO, where the Sybil first soothed, and with an inchanted sop, made with honey and poppies, lulled the threeheaded dog Cerberus, the porter of hell, to sleep; and, upon opening the gates, found in their several receptacles, first, the ghosts of infants-second, such as were charged with false accufations, and unjustly put to death-third, self-murderers-this was a melancholy region, amidst marshes formed by the overflowing of the river Styx-fourth, the fields of

* This was taught, to promote the funeral rites, which were inftituted by the legislator to prevent private murders. mourning,

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mourning, full of dark groves, for those who died for love; among whom were the unhappy Phædra*, Procris, Eryphyle, Evadne, Laodamia, Pasiphaë, Cænis, and unfortunate Dido, who, looking first upon him with a countenance full of indignation and fury, turns her face aside, fixes her eyes upon the ground, and then leaves him abruptly, without giving him one word of an answer +-fifth, and last, for

* The short history of these unfortunate ladies is as follows: Phædra, the wife of Theseus, being in love with her fon-inlaw, Hippolitus, and he continuing inflexibly deaf to her incestuous passion, she first accuses him wrongfully to his father of attempting her virtue, and then murders herself out of remorse. Procris, the wife of Cephalus, was extremely jealous of her husband; in hopes of surprizing him, she conceals herself in a thicket, where she imagined he met his mistress: Cephalus hearing her move, and imagining it to be a wild beast, bent his bow, and shot her dead. Eryphyle, the wife of Amphiaraus, discovered to Adrastus the place where her husband had concealed himself, to avoid going to the Theban war. Amphiaraus pe rishing before Thebes, Alcmeon, his son, revenged his death by slaughtering his mother. Evadne, the wife of Capaneus, fo desperately loved her husband, thas she caft herself on the funeral pyre, when his body was burning. Laodamia was so fond of her husband Protefilaus, that after he was killed before the walls of Thebes, she begged of the gods she might see his ghost; which being granted, she perished in his embraces. Pafiphaë was said to be the daughter of the Sun, and wife to Minos king of Crete; she fell desperately in love with a bull. Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, a Lapithan, obtained of her lover, Neptune, as a reward of her prostitution, that she might be transformed into a man, and rendered invulnerable: but the gods being offended at her pride and cruelty, she was destroyed in the war with the Lapithæ, and made a woman. again after her death, that for her impieties, she might be deprived of both the favours which Neptune had granted her.

+ The filence of Dido is described in a beautiful manner by the poet :

Talibus Æneas ardentem, et torva tuentem
Lenibat dictis animum, lacrymasque ciebat
Illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat.

Tandem proripuit sese, atque inimica refugit
In nemus umbriferum.

Æn. vi. 467.

" Nought

for departed warriors. ÆNEAS here beheld the Grecian generals and common foldiers who had perished at the siege of Troy, as drawn up in squadrons and terrified at his approach, which renewed in them those impressions of fear they had before received in battle with the Trojans.

Here likewife he viewed the Trojan heroes who had lived in former ages, amidst a visionary scene of chariots and arms, flowery meadows, shining spears, and generous steeds, which were their pleafures while upon earth, and now made up their happiness in Elyfium.

Among these shades he found Deiphobus, Priam's son, with his mangled body; who being married to Helen after Paris, was betrayed by her on the bridal night to Menelaüs, and cut to pieces.

His hands, ears, nostrils, hideous to survey!
The stern insulting foes had lopp'd away.

That on

After this the road branches into two. the left-hand leading to the place destined for the various punishments of the wicked, furrounded with the burning river Phlegethon, and guarded by

hell:

"Nought to these tender words the fair replies,
"But fixt on earth her unrelenting eyes,
"The chief still weeping; with a fullen mien,
" In stedfast filence, frown'd th' obdurate queen.
"Fixt as a rock amidst the roaring main,
" She hears him sigh, implore, and plead in vain.
"Then, where the woods their thickest shades display,
" From his detested sight she shoots away."

PITT.

Milton has given us a noble description of the rivers of

Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron, of forrow; black and deep!
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream: fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

Parad. Loft, B. ii. 577.