Who has not heard of Caprea's guilty shore,
Polluted by the rank old emperor.

FROM NAPLES TO ROME, by sea.

I TOOK a felucca at Naples to carry me to Rome, that I might not be forced to run over the same sights a second time, and might have an opportunity of seeing many things in a road which our voyage writers have not so particularly described. As in my journey from Rome to Naples I had Horace for my guide, so I had the pleasure of seeing my voyage from Naples to Rome described by Virgil. It is, indeed, much easier to trace out the way Æneas took, than that of Horace, because Virgil has marked it out by capes, islands, and other parts of nature, which are not so subject to change or decay as are towns, cities, and the works of art. Mount Pausilypo makes a beautiful prospect to those who pass by it at a small distance from it lies the little island of Nisida, adorned with a great variety of plantations, rising one above another in so beautiful an order, that the whole island looks like a large terrace-garden. It has two little ports, and is not at present troubled with any of those noxious steams that Lucan mentions:

-Tali spiramine Nesis

Emittit Stygium nebulosis aera saxis.

Nesis' high rocks such Stygian air produce,
And the blue breathing pestilence diffuse.

Lib. 6.

From Nisida we rowed to cape Miseno. The extremity of this cape has a long cleft in it, which was enlarged and cut into shape by Agrippa, who made this the great port for the Roman fleet that served

in the Mediterranean; as that of Ravenna held the ships designed for the Adriatic and Archipelago. The highest end of this promontory rises in the fashion of a sepulchre or monument to those that survey it from the land, which perhaps might occasion Virgil's burying Misenus under it. I have seen a grave Italian author, who has written a very large book on the Campania Felice, that from Virgil's description of this mountain concludes it was called Aerius before Misenus had given it a

new name:

At pius Eneas ingenti mole sepulchrum

Imponit, suaque arma viro, remumque, tubamque,
Monte sub Aerio, qui nunc Misenus ab illo
Dicitur, æternumque tenet per sæcula nomen.

EN. lib. 6.

There are still to be seen a few ruins of old Misenum, but the most considerable antiquity of the place is a set of galleries that are hewn into the rock, and are much more spacious than the Piscina Mirabilis. Some will have them to have been a reservoir of water, but others, more probably, suppose them to have been Nero's baths. I lay the first night on the isle of Procita, which is pretty well cultivated, and contains about four thousand inhabitants, who are all vassals to the marquis de Vasto.

The next morning I went to see the isle of Ischia, that stands farther out into the sea. The ancient poets call it Inarime, and lay Typhæus under it, by reason of its eruptions of fire. There has been no eruption for near these three hundred years. The last was very terrible, and destroyed a whole city. At present there are scarce any marks left of a subterraneous fire, for the earth is cold, and overrun

with grass and shrubs, where the rocks will suffer it. There are, indeed, several little cracks in it, through which there issues a constant smoke, but it is probable this arises from the warm springs that feed the many baths with which this island is plentifully stocked. I observed, about one of these breathing passages, a spot of myrtles that flourish within the steam of these vapours, and have a continual moisture hanging upon them. On the south of Ischia lies a round lake of about three quarters of a mile diameter, separate from the sea by a narrow tract of land. It was formerly a Roman port. On the north end of the island stands the town and castle, on an exceeding high rock, divided from the body of the island, and inaccessible to an enemy on all sides. This island is larger, but much more rocky and barren, than Procita. Virgil makes them both shake at the fall of part of the mole of Baja, that stood at a few miles' distance from them:

Qualis in Euboico Bajarum littore quondam
Saxea pila cadit, magnis quam molibus ante
Constructam jaciunt pelago: sic illa ruinam
Prona trahit, penitusque vadis illisa recumbit ;
Miscent se maria et nigra attolluntur arenæ :
Tum sonitu Prochyta alta tremit, durumque cubile
Inarime, Jovis imperiis imposta Typhöeo.

Not with less ruin than the Bajan mole
(Rais'd on the seas the surges to control)
At once comes tumbling down the rocky wall,
Prone to the deep the stones disjointed fall
Off the vast pile; the scatter'd ocean flies;

ÆN. 9.

Black sands, discolour'd froth, and mingl'd mud arise.
The frighted billows roll, and seek the shores :
Trembles high Prochyta, and Ischia roars:
Typhæus roars beneath, by Jove's command,
Astonish'd at the flaw that shakes the land,

Soon shifts his weary side, and scarce awake,
With wonder feels the weight press lighter on his back.
DRYDEN.

I do not see why Virgil, in this noble comparison, has given the epithet of alta to Procita, for it is not only no high island in itself, but is much lower than Ischia, and all the points of land that lie within its neighbourhood. I should think alta was joined adverbially with tremit, did Virgil make use of so equivocal a syntax. I cannot forbear inserting in this place the lame imitation Silius Italicus has made of the foregoing passage.

Haud aliter, structo Tyrrhena ad littora saxo,
Pugnatura fretis subter cæcisque procellis
Pila, immane sonans, impingitur ardua ponto ;
Immugit Nereus, divisaque cærula pulsu
Illisum accipiunt irata sub æquora montem.

Lib. 4.

So a vast fragment of the Bajan mole,
That fix'd amid the Tyrrhene waters, braves
The beating tempests and insulting waves.
Thrown from its basis with a dreadful sound,
Dashes the broken billows all around,
And with resistless force the surface cleaves,
That in its angry waves the falling rock receives.

The next morning, going to Cumæ through a very pleasant path, by the Mare Mortuum and the Elysian fields, we saw in our way a great many ruins of sepulchres, and other ancient edifices. Cumæ is at present utterly destitute of inhabitants, so much is it changed since Lucan's time, if the poem to Piso be his :

Acidalia quæ condidit Alite muros
Euboicam referens fæcunda Neapolis urbem.
Where the fam❜d walls of fruitful Naples lie,
That may for multitudes with Cuma vie.

They show here the remains of Apollo's temple, which all the writers of the antiquities of this place suppose to have been the same Virgil describes in his sixth Æneid, as built by Dædalus, and that the very story which Virgil there mentions, was actually engraven on the front of it.

Redditus his primum terris tibi Phœbe sacravit
Remigium alarum, posuitque immania templa.
In foribus letum Androgei: tum pendere pœnas
Cecropida jussi, miserum! Septena quotannis
Corpora natorum: stat ductis sortibus urna.
Contra elata mari respondet Gnossia tellus, etc. Æn. 6.

To the Cumean coast at length he came,
And, here alighting, built his costly frame
Inscrib'd to Phoebus, here he hung on high
The steerage of his wings that cut the sky;
Then o'er the lofty gate his art emboss'd
Androgeo's death, and off'rings to his ghost,
Sev'n youths from Athens yearly sent to meet
The fate appointed by revengeful Crete;
And next to those the dreadful urn was plac'd,
In which the destin'd names by lots were east.
DRYDEN.

Among other subterraneous works there is the beginning of a passage, which is stopped up within less than a hundred yards of the entrance, by the earth that is fallen into it. They suppose it to have been the other mouth of the Sibyl's grotto. It lies, indeed, in the same line with the entrance near the Avernus, is faced alike with the opus reticulatum, and has still the marks of chambers that have been cut into the sides of it. Among the many fables and conjectures which have been made on this grotto, I think it is highly probable that it was once inhabited by such as, perhaps, thought it a better shelter against the sun than any other kind of build