heave from their
foundations. The noise of stripes, the clank of chains, and the groans
of the tortured, strike the pious AEneas with a kind of horror. The poet
afterwards divides the criminals into two classes: the first and
blackest catalogue consists of such as were guilty of outrages against
the gods; and the next, of such who were convicted of injustice between
man and man: the greatest number of whom, says the poet, are those who
followed the dictates of avarice.

It was an opinion of the Platonists, that the souls of men having
contracted in the body great stains and pollutions of vice and
ignorance, there were several purgations and cleansings necessary to be
passed through both here and hereafter, in order to refine and purify
them.[188]

Virgil, to give this thought likewise a clothing of poetry, describes
some spirits as bleaching in the winds, others as cleansing under great
falls of waters, and others as purging in fire to recover the primitive
beauty and purity of their natures.

It was likewise an opinion of the same sect of philosophers, that the
souls of all men exist in a separate state, long before their union with
their bodies; and that upon their immersion into flesh, they forget
everything which passed in the state of pre-existence; so that what we
here call knowledge, is nothing else but memory, or the recovery of
those things which we knew before.

In pursuance of this scheme, Virgil gives us a view of several souls,
who, to prepare themselves for living upon earth, flock about the banks
of the river Lethe, and swill themselves with the waters of oblivion.

The same scheme gives him an opportunity of making a noble compliment to
his countrymen, where Anchises is represented taking a survey of the
long train of heroes that are to descend from him, and giving his son,
AEneas an account of all the glories of his race.

I need not mention the revolution of the platonic year,[189] which is
but just touched upon in this book; and as I have consulted no author's
thoughts in this explication, shall be very well pleased, if it can make
the noblest piece of the most accomplished poet more agreeable to my
female readers, when they think fit to look into Dryden's translation of
it.

[Footnote 184: See No. 157.]

[Footnote 185: "Hath placed" (folio).]

[Footnote 186: "Pale shadows" (folio).]

[Footnote 187: See No. 133.]

[Footnote 188: "Purify the soul from ignorance and vice" (folio).]

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