"BE

E it granted that Virgil was right in following ancient

were at the lake of Avernus; and the narrow fhore was what was

tural gloom of the places, and the difmal ideas of the religion of the people concerning thefe places, the religio loci, as he elsewhere terms it: let it be proved, and nothing more can be proved, that the entrance to his hell was at Avernus: it yet appears to me, however great the authorities may be to the contrary, that the opinions of thofe are unfounded who fuppofe the hell of Homer to have the fame fituation. There is fcarcely any hypothefis which acutenefs may not render probable: as this feems to have been rendered. Cluverius himself, a very intelligent reader and commentator of the ancients, encoucourages this dream.

"Homer,' fays he, makes Ulyffes fail from the country of 'Circe, to that of Cimmeria in one day; and likewife with a north wind. Put these circumstances together, and he could only fail to thefe parts. The grove of Proferpine and the gloomy palace of Pluto, as mentioned by Homer,

leads from the Tyrrhene fea to the Lucrine lake.'

"In his treatife on the wanderings of Ulyffes, he fays, By the ocean, Homer here understands 'the Lucrine lake and that of 'Avernus.'

"Various circumstances are thus brought together; and in a certain fenfe, it would give me great pleafure now to be perfonally prefent on the places where thefe fcenes have paffed. How interefting would it be, for a paffionate admirer and lover of Homer, to vifit thofe countries that have been honoured by his boldeft flights! But the most interefting of all things is truth.

"By the ocean of Homer, we now generally understand the ocean properly fo called. Our learned Vols has taught us that Homer, and other poets, who lived long after Homer, by the word oceanus, underftood the great ftream: which, according to their opinion, flowed round the earth. Now, in whichever fenfe we understand it, we

fhall

fhall find how impoffible it was that the poet, in the above passage, could defcribe the Lucrine lake and the lake of Avernus by the

term oceanus.

"He was unacquainted with the Avernus, for he did not go up the country; and before Agrippa had levelled the high fhore of this lake, on the fide next the fea, and had united it with the Lucrine lake, it was not vifible from the fea.

"And even if Homer had afcended this high fhore, he would have been convinced of the fmall circumference of the lake, and certainly would not have called it the ocean. "That in later ages, though long before the time of Virgil, the refidence of the dead was fought for in this country, I very well know. It was later ages, that dedicated to Proferpine her grove, and to Pluto his gloomy palace. Livy tells us that Hannibal led a part of his army to Avernus, under the pretext of facrificing there; but in reality to make an attempt upon Puteoli, and the Roman garrifon that it contained.

"I believe it is a very ancient opinion that Homer led his Ulyffes to this place. The idea was flattering to the Greeks, who inhabited thefe coafts; and very flight grounds would make it credited by the people of Cuma, Puteoli, Baix, and, Parthenope: the prefent Naples.They were likewise interested in a political view it made them reipected. Befide, offerings no doubt were brought to their temples; and the nature of the country favoured the prejudice. The inundating, noxious-vapour-exhaling, water of the fea and the rivers, the at that time fiery Epomeus of the ifland of Ifchia, the caverns exhaling fulphur, the volcanic traces of the country, where the inhabitants stumbled as it

were over the ruins of nature, the frequent earthquakes, and add to thefe the vicinity of all the delights of nature contrafted with all her horrors, these circumftances, taken collectively, gave rife to, and food for, the imaginary fables and terrors of the empire of death : an empire in which, according to the relation of Homer, the abodes of the blessed border on the confines of the damned. /

"As an attentive reading of the Eneid has long vindicated Virgil from the abfurdity of having placed his entire hell in regions well known upon earth; fo likewife, had the travels of Ulyffes been attended to in the fame fpirit, they would not have led the reader to discover the fhades of death in this place. Without having recourfe to the ftrange confufion of the lake of Avernus with the ocean, this hypothefis is felf-deftructive.

"What reafon could Ulyffes have to return from the fhades of hell to Circe? Had he paffed the Avernus, his navigating back to the goddeís was unneceffary. His route led him fouthward to the island of the Sirens: Why did he fail back to the north, when he must a second time have neceffarily failed past the Avernus? Why did Circe tell him, when he entreated her to fend him back to Ithaca, that he must previoufly go another way, a to the abode of Pluto, Aidaes,; and to the terrible Proferpine, Perfephoneia; to question the foul of the prophet Tirefias? Ulyffes informed his companions of this other voyage. The intelligence grieved them to the heart; fo that they wept and tore their hair. And why? The danger of the defcent into hell was the task only of Ulyffes: but this unknown voyage over feas which none of them had yet

navigated, was equally terrible to them all.

"Neither did these clamours in the least agree with a voyage to the fhores of Avernus, which lay in their way and the fecond vifit to Circe was ftill more abfurd. Should it be answered that Ulyffes returned to inter Elpenor, who had broken his neck in the palace of the goddefs, and whom, oppreffed by other cares, he had left unburied, his meeting with the foul of Elpenor in the lower regions will fhew the error of this opinion. He entreated Ulyffes to remember him, and to fee him buried: for I know,' faid he, that thou wilt land on the ⚫Ææan ifland.'

"Ulyffes promises a ready compliance, as a thing eafily to be performed. Had he been excited by other cares, which had induced him to leave him unburied the first time, a ceremony that at the utmost would have required only the delay of a few days in order to afford him this token of his affection, what could now induce him to perform fuch a voyage for his fake? Elpenor well knew that Ulyffes would not unneceffarily wander over an unknown fea: but would more will ingly return by a route that he had already navigated, and afterward continue a coafting voyage.

"Where then was the hell of Homer fituated? In answer to this I must refer you to the map of Vofs, which contains the countries defcribed by Homer; and to his own inquiries concerning ancient geography. The empire of death may be concealed in that terrific and difmal gloom in which the poet found it, among the records of tradition: or he might have purpofely enveloped it in the darkness of amazement, and of horror. As fagacious in the conduct of his poem as he was rich $797.

in imagination, he might welcome this holy horror as the proper element for the creation of his boldest imagery. The characteristic marks of melancholy and gloom predominate through the whole of the eleventh book of the Odyssey.

"Whether the people of Cimmerium and their city, as described by the poet

"There in a lonely land and gloomy cells The dufky nation of Cimmeria dwells. Thefun ne'er views th'uncomfortable feats, When radiant he advances, or retreats. Unhappy race! whom endless night invades,

Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round

in fhades.

POPE, Od. b. xi. 15.

whether the dark kingdom of this benighted people was the creation of Homer, or, which to me is much more probable, the picture of more early fable, I cannot determine: but it does not appear to me that this paffage is applicable to the Cimmerii of Italy; who lived under ground. ' The latter, whether they actually buried themselves in fubterranean caverns or not, were probably fo called from the Cimmerii described by Homer.

"I fall again have occasion to fpeak of the Cimmerii of Italy, and of the light under which they have been confidered by the laft commentators on the ancients; particularly the Italians.

"Whoever has a just notion of the state of geography among the Greeks in much later times than thofe of Homer, whoever is familiarized with oceanus, in the Prometheus of Æfchylus, with the Arimafpi, and with the daughter of Phorcus-he, I fay, who is but flightly acquainted with the ancient Ionic bards, the contemporaries of Homer, will know that they might K

imaging

imagine thofe places, though they were but a day's fail beyond the promontory of Circe, that is, a day's fail to which the goddefs lent favourable winds, to be the limits of the earth. Later times have thrown back Cimmerian darknefs farther to the north. Hence the inhabitants of Jutland, and the Danish islands, have at length been called the Cimbri.

"The fables of the ancients have frequently wandered from place to place; and the motley multitudes of fyftem-makers have been eager to wander in their company.

"Great fhade of the greateft of poets, out of whofe ever youthful imagination the Iliad and Odyffey fprang, blooming, wouldst thou not, from thy real not fabulous Elyfium, look down, and laugh, didft thou three thousand years after the exiftence of thy Cimmerii, who were thy own offspring, behold a tribe of learned infects, induftrious bookworms, point out thy empire of hell on the map of Homan? An empire which thou, with all the caution of wisdom, haft placed beyond the ken of cold curiofity, in the necromantic darkness of legend; whofe non-exifting phantoms, embodied by thee, are pointed to as realities, and as the traces of geographical truth!

"During the whole peregrinations of Ulyffes from people to people, we can follow him without difficulty. How greatly is the poetical truth of the Odyffey realized by this circumftance! The wonderful phenomena of Scylla and Charybdis, which deterred the companions of the hero from near inquiry, contribute to the poetical fiction of their being living monfters. The Læftrygons, a wild people inhabiting the northern fhore of Sicily, were probably by the contemporaries of the poet fuppofed to

be giants: and was it a poet's bu fincis to reprefent them as common men?

"How fublime was the, fhall I call it poetical fiction, or, tradition of the ifland, which was governed by the prince and lord of the winds, Eolus! Homer took good care, that we might have no trace of any fuch ifland, to leave it floating in the fea. Both modern and ancient commentators fuppofe the largest of the Lipari iflands, near Sicily, to be the place. What I have faid of the Læftrygons is equally applicable to the Cyclops. Homer might well, three thousand years ago, with ap parent probability people an ifland with giants in which only two hun dred years ago Fazello, a valuable Sicilian author, was perfuaded of the truth of the fkeletons of giants having been found near Trapani, in the year 1342; and that one of them was the giant Eryx, flain by Hercules.

"The cautious poet likewife left the fituation of the ifland of Ogygia, the refidence of the goddess Calyp fo, fo undetermined, that fome have fuppofed it to be Malta, others Gozo near Malta, others again a little ifland below the bay of Taranto, and others an island near Albania, the ancient Epirus.

"Yet who fo determinate and circumftantial as Homer, when he can by that means promote poetical effect? Who fo lively, in defcribing and producing the fcenery, when he can thus give greater ani mation and reality to his characters? who knows like him to favour poe tical illufion by light clouds, or by dark, that now conceal, now magnify and render objects dreadful, and now glimmer round them; while they communicate thole tender trembling lights, which enchant the curiofity that they excite?

"Children