36 REMARKS on fome Pq/fages of 



As a fort of apology for the wildnefs of fome parts of this 

 fable, it may be remarked, that formerly at Cumse, near which 

 the Trojan fleet was now Rationed, there lived a prophetefs- 

 called the Cumean Sybil j that in her neighbourhood, encom- 

 pafTed with thick woods, there was a lake called Avernus, 

 which emitted peflilential fleams ; that in the fame parts of 

 Italy there are many dreadful caverns, one of which is to this 

 day called the Sybil's Grotto ; and that for thofe who knew 

 nothing of the real fize of the earth, or the final destination of 

 man, it was not altogether abfurd to imagine, as all dead bo- 

 dies return to the earth, that the fubterranean regions might 

 be the manfions of the ghofts or {hades of human beings de- 

 parted. 



The neceffary facrifices being performed, and Eneas ha- 

 ving found in the woods that golden bough which, being in- 

 tended as a prefent to Proserpine, was to ferve him as a pafT- 

 port through her dominions ; the Sybil or prieftefs plunged into 

 the cavern, calling to him to follow her, with his fword drawn 

 in his hand. They went a great way through a lonely region, 

 where there was no more light than one travelling in a wood 

 receives in a cloudy night from the moon. At length they ar- 

 rived at the entrance of the infernal world, where a number of 

 terrible beings refided ; Difeafe, Old Age, Fear, Famine, Poverty, 

 and Death, and Labour, and War, and Difcord ; and fuch mon- 

 strous things as centaurs, gorgons, harpies and giants, one with 

 three heads, and another with a hundred hands, and the chi- 

 mera breathing fire, and the many-headed ferpent of Lerna 

 roaring hideoufly. By placing thefe at the entrance, the poet 

 perhaps intended to Signify, in the way of allegory, the horrors 

 that accompany the near approach of death ; or perhaps thofe 

 many evils, real and imaginary, which we muft all pafs through 

 in our way to the other world. 



From this place to the river Styx was a region, in which the 

 ghofts of thofe, whofe bodies had not been honoured with the 



rites 



