II. R E M A R KS on fome Paffages of the fixth Book of the E N E i D. 

 By James Beattie, LL. D. F. R. S. Edin. and Pro- 

 feffor of Logic and Moral Philofophy in the Marifchal College, 

 Aberdeen, 



[Read by Mr Dalzel, Secretary ^ March 19. 1787.] 



THE poetical beauties of Virgil's fixth book are great 

 and many ; and a mofl agreeable talk it would be to 

 point them out : but that is not my prefent purpofe. Nor do I 

 intend to draw a comparifon of the fentiments of our poet 

 with thofe of Homer, concerning a future ftate. From Ho- 

 mer, no doubt, Virgil received the firft hint of this epifode 5 

 but the evocation of the ghofts, in the eleventh book of the 

 Odyffey, is not in any degree fo flriking, or fo poetical, as 

 Eneas's defcent into the world of fpirits. Nor does the for- 

 mer exhibit any diftindl idea of retribution. In it all is dark 

 and uncomfortable. " I would rather, fays the ghoft of 

 " Achilles, be the flave of a poor peafant among the living, 

 " than reign fole monarch of the dead :" a paflage blamed, 

 not without reafon, by Plato, as unfriendly to virtue, and 

 tending to debafe the foul by an unmanly fear of death. 



My defign is, to give as plain an account as I can of the 

 theology (if I may be allowed to call it fo) of this part of Vir- 

 gil's poem. And I fhall make the poet his own interpreter, 

 without trufting to commentators, or feeking unneceflTary illu- 

 ftrations from Plato, to whom Virgil, though he differs 

 from him in many particulars, was indebted for the outlines of 



Vol. II. E the 



