ls of natural affection,
and making himself known to his mother. Her eyes are no sooner opened,
but she cries out in tears, "Oh my son!" and inquires into the occasions
that brought him thither, and the fortune that attended him.

Ulysses on the other hand desires to know, what the sickness was that
had sent her into those regions, and the condition in which she had left
his father, his son, and more particularly his wife. She tells him, they
were all three inconsolable for his absence; "and as for myself," says
she, "that was the sickness of which I died. My impatience for your
return, my anxiety for your welfare, and my fondness for my dear
Ulysses, were the only distempers that preyed upon my life, and
separated my soul from my body." Ulysses was melted with these
expressions of tenderness, and thrice endeavoured to catch the
apparition in his arms, that he might hold his mother to his bosom and
weep over her.

This gives the poet occasion to describe the notion the heathens at that
time had of an unbodied soul, in the excuse which the mother makes for
seeming to withdraw herself from her son's embraces. "The soul," says
she, "is composed neither of bones, flesh, nor sinews, but leaves behind
her all those encumbrances of mortality to be consumed on the funeral
pile. As soon as she has thus cast her burden she makes her escape, and
flies away from it like a dream."

When this melancholy conversation is at an end, the poet draws up to
view as charming a vision as could enter into man's imagination. He
describes the next who appeared to Ulysses, to have been the shades of
the finest women that had ever lived upon the earth, and who had either
been the daughters of kings, the mistresses of gods, or mothers of
heroes, such as Antiope, Alcmena, Leda, Ariadne, Iphimedia, Eriphyle,
and several others of whom he gives a catalogue, with a short history of
their adventures. The beautiful assembly of apparitions were all
gathered together about the blood: "each of them," says Ulysses (as a
gentle satire upon female vanity), "giving me an account of her birth
and family." This scene of extraordinary women seems to have been
designed by the poet as a lecture of mortality to the whole sex, and to
put them in mind of what they must expect, notwithstanding the greatest
perfections, and highest honours, they can arrive at.

The circle of beauties at length disappeared, and was succeeded by the
shades of several Grecian heroes who