, says the author, are malicious critics, that have
endeavoured to cast a blemish upon the perfections of others; with whom
he likewise places such as have often hurt the reputation of the
innocent, by passing a rash judgment on their actions, without knowing
the occasion of them. These crimes, says he, are more severely punished
after death, because they generally meet with impunity upon earth.

Telemachus, after having taken a survey of several other wretches in the
same circumstances, arrives at that region of torments in which wicked
kings are punished. There are very fine strokes of imagination in the
description which he gives of this unhappy multitude. He tells us, that
on one side of them there stood a revengeful fury, thundering in their
ears incessant repetitions of all the crimes they had committed upon
earth, with the aggravations of ambition, vanity, hardness of heart, and
all those secret affections of mind that enter into the composition of a
tyrant. At the same time, she holds up to them a large mirror, in which
every one sees himself represented in the natural horror and deformity
of his character. On the other side of them stands another fury, that
with an insulting derision repeats to them all the praises that their
flatterers had bestowed upon them while they sat upon their respective
thrones. She too, says the author, presents a mirror before their eyes,
in which every one sees himself adorned with all those beauties and
perfections in which they had been drawn by the vanity of their own
hearts, and the flattery of others. To punish them for the wantonness of
the cruelty which they formerly exercised, they are now delivered up to
be treated according to the fancy and caprice of several slaves, who
have here an opportunity of tyrannising in their turns.

The author having given us a description of these ghastly spectres, who,
says he, are always calling upon Death, and are placed under the
distillation of that burning vengeance which falls upon them drop by
drop, and is never to be exhausted, leads us into a pleasing scene of
groves, filled with the melody of birds, and the odours of a thousand
different plants. These groves are represented as rising among a great
many flowery meadows, and watered with streams that diffuse a perpetual
freshness, in the midst of an eternal day, and a never-fading spring.
This, says the author, was the habitation of those good princes who were
friends of the gods, and