The Dunciad in the City. Theobald sleeps with his head on the goddess's lap, with royal blue fogs surrounding him. In his dream, he goes to Hades and visits the shade of Elkannah Settle. There he sees millions of souls waiting for new bodies as their souls transmigrate. Bavius dips each soul in Lethe to make it dull before sending it to a new body. (In classical mythology, the souls of the dead were put into Lethe to forget their lives before passing on to their final reward, but these are dipped in Lethe before being born.) Elkannah Settle hails Theobald as
Isle of the Dead (painting) produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.” The title, which was conferred upon it by the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt in 1883, was not specified by Böcklin, though it does derive from a phrase in an 1880 letter he sent to the painting’s original commissioner. Not knowing the history of the early versions of the painting (see below), many observers have interpreted the oarsman as representing the boatman Charon who ferried souls to the underworld in Greek mythology. The water would then be either the River Styx or the River Acheron and