sure will entertain you
very agreeably. There will be likewise two lutes and a trumpet:
let me beg you to put yourself in tune, and believe me

"Your very faithful Servant,
"NICHOLAS HUMDRUM."[184]

No. 154. [ADDISON.

From _Saturday, April 1_, to _Tuesday, April 4, 1710_.

Obscuris vera involvens.--VIRG., AEn. vi. 100.

* * * * *

_From my own Apartment, April 3._

We have already examined Homer's description of a future state, and the
condition in which he has placed the souls of the deceased. I shall in
this paper make some observations on the account which Virgil has given
us of the same subject, who, besides a greatness of genius, had all the
lights of philosophy and human learning to assist and guide him in his
discoveries.

AEneas is represented as descending into the empire of death, with a
prophetess by his side, who instructs him in the secrets of those lower
regions.

Upon the confines of the dead, and before the very gates of this
infernal world, Virgil describes[185] several inhabitants, whose natures
are wonderfully suited to the situation of the place, as being either
the occasions or resemblances of death. Of the first kind are the
shadows[186] of Sickness, Old Age, Fear, Famine, and Poverty
(apparitions very terrible to behold); with several others, as Toil,
War, Contention, and Discord, which contribute all of them to people
this common receptacle of human souls. As this was likewise a very
proper residence for everything that resembles death, the poet tells us,
that Sleep, whom he represents as a near relation to Death, has likewise
his habitation in these quarters, and describes in them a huge gloomy
elm-tree, which seems a very proper ornament for the place, and is
possessed by an innumerable swarm of Dreams, that hang in clusters under
every leaf of it. He then gives us a list of imaginary persons, who very
naturally lie within the shadow of the dream-tree, as being of the same
kind of make in themselves, and the materials or (to use Shakespeare's
phrase) the stuff of which dreams are made. Such are the shades of the
giant with a hundred hands, and of his brother with three bodies; of the
double-shaped Centaur and Scylla; the Gorgon with snaky hair; the Harpy
with a woman's face and lion's talons; the seven-hea