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Page:An Essay on Virgil's Æneid.djvu/70

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are the Tears of a King and a Hero; he does not weep for himself, but his Subjects; nor grieve for the Approach of Death, but the Manner of it; for thro’ the whole Speech, he passionately wishes he had dy’d warm in the Field of Battle. Besides, such a Fright appears very Justifiable in him, or any Hero of those Ages, when it was a received Opinion, that drowning was an accursed Death, and that those who were depriv’d of the Rites of Sepulture, were condemn’d to wander an hundred Years on the Banks of the River Styx, before they were transported to the Elysian Fields; as we read in the sixth Æneid.

Hæc Omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque Turba est;
Portitor ille, Charon; hi, quos vehit unda, sepulti.
Nec ripas datur horrendas, nec rauca fluenta
Transportare prius, quam sedibus Ossa quiêrunt;
Centum errant annos, volitantque hæc litora circum;
Tum demum admissi stagna exoptata revisunt.

L. 6. V. 324.

Verse 147. On hidden Rocks, &c.] This Passage has been charg’d with Contradiction, because the Rocks are said to be hidden, and yet to appear with a huge Ridge above the Water. Ruaeus says, that the Islands themselves might appear above the Surface with a great Prominence, and the Rocks which were a-

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