II. REMARKS on fome Passages of the fixth Book of the ENEID.

By JAMES BEATTIE, LL. D. F. R. S. EDIN. and Profeffor of Logic and Moral Philofophy in the Marifchal College, Aberdeen.

[Read by Mr DALZEL, Secretary, March 19. 1787.]

TH

HE poetical beauties of VIRGIL's fixth book are great and many; and a most agreeable task it would be to point them out: but that is not my present purpose. Nor do I intend to draw a comparison of the fentiments of our poet with those of HOMER, concerning a future ftate. From HoMER, no doubt, VIRGIL received the first hint of this episode; but the evocation of the ghofts, in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, is not in any degree so striking, or so poetical, as ENEAS's defcent into the world of fpirits. Nor does the former exhibit any distinct idea of retribution. In it all is dark and uncomfortable. "I would rather, fays the ghost of ACHILLES, be the flave of a poor peafant among the living, "than reign fole monarch of the dead:" a passage blamed, not without reafon, by PLATO, as unfriendly to virtue, and tending to debase 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 VIRGIL's poem. And I fhall make the poet his own interpreter, without trusting to commentators, or feeking unneceffary illustrations from PLATO, to whom VIRGIL, though he differs from him in many particulars, was indebted for the outlines of

VOL. II.