33 REMARKS on fame Pajages of 



have faid, That the Greeks learned it from the Egyptians, which 

 is indeed probable enough; that the Egyptians framed both 

 this, and fome other fables relating to the dead, from certain 

 cuftoms peculiar to their country ; that in particular there was, 

 not far from Memphis, a famous burying-place, to which the 

 dead bodies were conveyed in a boat acrofs the lake Acherufia ; 

 and that Charon was a boatman who had long officiated in that 

 fervice. The learned Dr Blackwell fays, in his life of Ho- 

 mer, that, in the old Egyptian language, Charoni fignified fer- 

 ryman. 



The travellers had now before them a region which the poet 

 calls lugentes campi, extending from the other fide of the Styx to 

 the road that leads to Elyfium on the right hand, and that 

 which terminates in Tartarus on the left. Thefe melancholy 

 plains mufl not be confounded with Tartarus. The latter is a 

 place of eternal torment, prepared for thofe who, in this world, 

 had been guilty of great crimes ; for there, fays the poet, " Se- 

 " det, aternumopiz fedebit infelix Thefeus." The former, 

 though an uncomfortable region, is not a place of endlefs pu- 

 nifhment, but a fort of purgatory, in which all thofe fouls 

 that are not configned to Tartarus, are doomed to undergo 

 certain purifying pains, to prepare them for Elyfium. Thefe 

 pains are more or lefs fevere, and of longer or fhorter duration, 

 according to the degree of guilt committed in the upper world. 

 The fouls, on pamng the Styx, appear before the judge Minos, 

 who fummons a council, either of ghofts or of infernal deities, 

 but whether as a jury, or as witnefTes, we know not ; and ha- 

 ving informed himfelf of the lives and characters of thofe who 

 are brought before him, allots to each a fuitable manfion in this 

 purgatory. 



The fouls thus difpofed of, are— firjl, thofe of good men, 

 who, after undergoing the neceflary pains of purification, pafs 

 into Elyfium, where they remain in a ftate of happinefs for 

 ever ; 2dly, of thofe who have been of little or no ufe to man- 

 kind : 



