40 RE MA R KS on fome Pajjfages of 



daughters they were, facrifice was occafionally performed. 

 Ovid fays indeed, that they relented on hearing the fong of 

 Orpheus, but affures us it was for the firft time. Virgil, in 

 his account of that aiFair, fays only, that they were aftoniflied. 



Here I cannot but remark how abfurd it is for us to begin 

 an epitaph with the words Dis Manibus, or the letters D. M. 

 which oftener than once I have feen on a modern tombftone. 

 Such an exordium may be claffical ; but, in a Chriflian church- 

 yard, an invocation to Proferpine would not be more incongru- 

 ous. Addison did well, when he advifed the writers of his 

 time not to facrifice their catechifm to their poetry. 



I SAID, that the Manes feem to have had nothing to do in 

 Tartarus. I am not ignorant, however, that Rue us and the 

 common Di<ftionaries affirm, that the word fometimes denotes 

 the furies, and quote as an authority, " Ignofcenda quidem, 

 " fcirent fi ignofcere manes." But this is not fufficient autho- 

 rity. That verfe of Virgil relates to Orpheus looking behind 

 him, when condu(5ling his wife to the upper world ; a fault, or 

 infatuation, which was to be puniflied, not by the fcourge of 

 the furies, bvit by calling back Eurydice to the Ihades below ; 

 and which the Manes, however placable, could not pardon, 

 becaufe it was a diredl violation of the treaty with Profer- 

 pine. 



It is fomewhat difficult to xinderftand diflin<Etly what the 

 ancients meant by the words anima, umbra, fimulacra, which, 

 in this difcourfe, I call ghojis, pades or fouls. We know, that 

 man confifts of a body and a foul, a material and an incorpo- 

 real part ; the one, like all other bodies, inadive, the other the 

 fource of life, motion and intelligence. But, on comparing 

 the general dodrine of this fixth book with a palTage in the 

 fourth Georgic, and with the eleventh of the OdyfTey, we find, 

 that our poet, following in part the opinions of Pythagoras 

 and Plato, and partly too the reprefentations of Homer, fup- 

 pofed man to confill of three fubftances ; frjl, a vital and ac- 

 tive 



