CONCLUDING REMARKS.
The Æneid has two drawbacks to its popularity as an epic poem amongst
modern readers. One defect is common to all classical fiction--that
there is no love-romance, properly so called, on the part either of the
hero or of any other male character in the poem. Love, as now
understood, has no place either in Virgil or Homer. We find in their
verse none of those finer shades of feeling, that loyal personal
allegiance, that high unselfish devotion, the mysterious sympathy, as
untranslatable by anything but itself as the most perfect wording of the
poet, which, nursed, it has been said, in the lap of Northern chivalry,
but surely of much older birth, has given now for centuries to poet and
to novelist their highest charm and inspiration. Poets had to sing as
they could without it in Virgil’s days. Augustus and Octavia, as they
listened to the courtly _raconteur_, would have opened their eyes wide
with astonishment if he had sung to them of the devotion of Lancelot, as
surely as they would have laughed at the purity of Galahad. They
understood what love was, in their fashion; many ladies of the court
sympathised with Dido, no doubt. They understood well enough “the fury
of a woman scorned.” They had seen a whole love-poem in real life, with
the appropriate tragical _dénouement_, in Antony and Cleopatra. That was
their notion of the grand passion. Probably the more shrewd among them
looked upon Antony as a fool to prefer “love” to empire, and applauded
Æneas’s “piety” in obeying the oracles of the gods, when they pointed to
a new wife whose dowry was a kingdom. There was quite love enough in the
action of the poem to suit their tastes, and at anything better or purer
they would have only shrugged their fair patrician shoulders.
But there is a more serious defect in the interest of the Æneid, when
presented to English readers. It is, that Æneas is no hero. All the
defences and apologies which have been made for him are perfectly just,
and perfectly unnecessary. He was a hero quite good enough for the court
of Augustus, and so far quite suitable for Virgil’s purpose. Le Bossu
was perfectly right when he contended that a hero, to be an object of
legitimate interest, need not be a pattern of moral virtues. He might
have gone further, and said that such paragons, who are plainly superior
to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature, generally make very dull
heroes indeed. Undoubtedly Æneas is a dutiful son, a respectable father,
and, it may even be admitted, in spite of the unfortunate way in which
he lost his wife, an exemplary husband. He spread his palms out to
heaven in the most orthodox fashion on all occasions, and listened
obediently to the message which the gods were always sending him, to
set up his home in Latium at all costs. All these estimable qualities
are enough to furnish forth a dozen heroes. He is also ready to fight on
all proper occasions; and as to the charge that he is equally ready to
weep upon all occasions, which has been brought against him by one set
of critics, and excused by others, both might have spared their pens;
for it is a weakness which may be charged with equal truth upon most of
the heroes, not only of classical fiction, but of classical history. It
is not only that the chiefs of the Iliad weep without fearing any
imputation against their manliness, but if we are to trust the
unsensational chronicles of Cæsar, the whole rank and file of his army,
even the veterans of the tenth legion--the “fighting division”--when
first they heard that they were to be led against the tall and
truculent-looking Germans, “could not restrain their tears,” and set to
work to make their wills forthwith. The thing is unaccountable, except
from some strange difference of temperament; for who can imagine a
company of our veriest raw ploughboy recruits so behaving themselves?
They might shake in their very shoes; they might even very probably run
away: but crying and howling is not our way of expressing emotion, after
childhood is past. But we are accustomed to read of such exhibitions of
feeling in the natives of warmer climates, as, for instance, in the
characters of Scripture; and an occasional burst of tears on Æneas’s
part would not have unheroed him in our estimation one whit. It is his
desertion of Dido which makes an irredeemable poltroon of him in all
honest English eyes. A woman and a queen receives the shipwrecked
wanderer with a more than Oriental hospitality; loves him, “not wisely
but too well”--and he deserts her. And then Mercury is made to remark,
as a reason for Æneas getting away as quickly as possible, that “varium
et mutabile semper _fœmina_!”--that the poor _lady’s_ mood was
changeable, forsooth! The desertion is in obedience to the will of the
gods, no doubt. That explanation satisfied the critics of Augustus’s
day, and he was to them, as Virgil calls him, the “pious” Æneas. To the
modern reader, such an authorisation only makes the treachery more
disgusting. The morality of English romance, ancient or modern, is by no
means immaculate. Tristram and Iseult, still more Lancelot and
Guinevere, are of very frail clay. The Sir Galahads ride alone; then,
now, and always, in fiction as in fact. But a hero who could be false to
a woman, and who was to find in that falsehood the turning-point to fame
and success,--he might befit the loose tale with which the _rybauder_
raised a laugh round the camp-fire, but he was the subject of no lay to
which noble knight or dame would listen. The passion might be only _pars
amours_, but it must be loyal. To keep such faith, once pledged, the
hero might break all other laws, divine or human; but keep it he must.
“_Loyaulté passe tout, et faulsseté honnet tout._” The principle is by
no means the highest, but it is incomparably higher than Virgil’s. And
this makes Lancelot, in spite of his great crime, a hero in one sense,
even to the purest mind, while the calculating piety of Æneas is
revolting.
The apologetic criticisms of some translators, who have felt themselves
bound not only to give a faithful version of their author, but to defend
his conception of a hero, are highly entertaining. Dryden, who was said
by one of his malicious critics to have written “for the court ladies,”
admits candidly that he knows they “will make a numerous party against
him,” and that he “cannot much blame them, for, to say the truth, it is
an ill precedent for their gallants to follow;” winding up with a
satirical suggestion that they would do well at least “to learn
experience at her cost.” But in spite of this special pleading, even
Dryden cannot conceal from himself that his hero makes but a very poor
figure in this part of the story; nor can he resist the humorous remark
that he was more afraid of Dido, after all, than of Jupiter. “For you
may observe,” says he, “that as much intent as he was upon his voyage,
yet he still delayed it until the messenger was obliged to tell him
plainly, that if he weighed not anchor in the night, the queen would be
with him in the morning.” Delille says that Æneas “triumphed over his
passions in order to obey the will of heaven;” and forgets to add, that
the triumph would have been more complete and more creditable if it had
been achieved somewhat earlier in the story. He notices the unfortunate
fate of poor Creusa,--left to follow as she might, and never missed till
the more fortunate survivors met at the rendezvous,--only to say how
necessary it was for the purposes of the story to dispose of her
somehow, if there was a new wife awaiting Æneas in Italy; and how the
account (his own account) of his affectionate search for her (with the
usual tears) must have recommended him to Dido, and excused that poor
lady for falling in love with him instantly! Rousseau has more truth in
his epigram,--what could Dido expect better from a man who left his
lawful wife to be burnt in Troy, and vowed he never missed her? Segrais,
very like a Frenchman of the days of Louis XIV., thinks all would have
been right if Æneas had but thrown a little more sentiment into the
parting, and had bestowed upon Dido a few of those tears which were so
ready upon less pathetic occasions.[42] As to the scene in the Shades,
where the false lover begins at last to make his tardy excuses and
apologies, the French critic fairly throws up his brief for the defence,
and contents himself with the suggestion that this was one of those
passages in the poem with which Virgil himself was dissatisfied, and
which he must certainly have intended to correct. But Æneas has, in
fact, little personal character of any kind. He is only what Keble calls
him, “a shadow with a mighty name;” and that writer even goes so far as
to suggest, that in the curse imprecated upon him by Dido, and her
treatment of him in the Shades, we may see an intimation that the poet
intended the abasement of his hero.[43]
Turnus will always find more favour in the eyes of modern readers than
his rival. Our English sympathies do not run at all with the foreign
adventurer who comes between him and his promised bride, and who claims
both the lady and the kingdom by virtue of a convenient oracle. Mr
Gladstone’s may perhaps be only an ingenious fancy, that Turnus was
really the favourite with the poet himself; that although he made Æneas
victorious, as was required, in order to carry out the complimentary
reference of the Roman origin to Troy, still the young chief of native
Italian blood, maintaining a gallant struggle for his rights against
gods and men, and only conquered at the last by supernatural force and
fraud, was purposely held out to popular admiration. But we must, at
least, feel sympathy with him as utterly over-weighted in the final
struggle by the superior strength and immortal arms of his adversary,
and the flapping of the Fury’s awful wings.
To trace the influence of the Æneid upon modern poetry would require a
separate treatise. Spenser is full of Virgil. Tasso’s great poem is in
many passages the Æneid made Christian, with its heroes transplanted
from the days of Troy to those of the Crusades. Dante borrows less from
him, though with an intenser reverence he takes him for his “master” and
his guide. In his mind, indeed, Virgil seems to have held a place
midway, as it were, between the Pagan and the Christian life. If
Beatrice represents, as has been said, the heavenly “Wisdom,” Virgil is,
in his allegory, the human intellect at its best and purest, which comes
as near heaven as unassisted humanity may; for he is the guide who only
quits the Christian poet when he is close to the gates of Paradise.
The “Sortes Virgilianæ” were long in use, often as a fashionable
pastime, sometimes in graver earnest: the inquirer opened the volume at
random, and took for the answer of fate the first few lines which caught
his eye. In the times of the later Roman emperors, they ranked among the
most popular, and perhaps the least objectionable, of the many
superstitious practices which were then so prevalent. The Emperor
Severus was said to have been encouraged in his boyhood by the very
words which had such an effect on Octavia--“Thou shalt be our
Marcellus!” And when subsequently he showed a taste rather for elegant
accomplishments than for military renown, again the “Sortes,” consulted
for him by his father, gave the well-known lines already quoted,[44] in
which the glory of the Roman is pronounced to be that of the conqueror,
not of the student or the artist. The superstition held its ground,
through the middle ages, down to times very near our own. The story
rests upon no mean authority, that Charles I. once tried the oracle with
a startling result. He was in the Bodleian Library while the Court lay
in Oxford, and was there shown a splendid edition of Virgil. Lord
Falkland suggested to him sportively that he should try the “Sortes.”
The lines upon which the king opened are said to have been these, as
they stand in Mr Conington’s version:--
“Scourged by a savage enemy,
An exile from his son’s embrace,
So let him sue for aid, and see
His people slain before his face:
Or when to humbling peace at length
He stoops, be his or life or land,
But let him fall in manhood’s strength,
And welter tombless on the sand.”
It was a gloomy oracle; and Falkland, anxious to remove the impression,
tried his own fortune. He lighted on Evander’s lament over his son
Pallas:--
“I knew the young blood’s maddening play,
The charm of battle’s first essay;
O valour blighted in the flower!
O first mad drops of war’s full shower!”
A few months afterwards Falkland fell at the battle of Newbury, barely
thirty-four years old.
There has always been a mystical school of classical interpretation, who
see in the Æneid, as in the Iliad and Odyssey, a tissue of allegory from
first to last. Not content with identifying the Trojan chief with
Augustus, they found a double meaning in every character and every
legend in the poem. Bishop Warburton, in his well-known ‘Divine
Legation,’ expended a great amount of learning and research to prove
that in the Descent to the Shades in the sixth book we have a sketch,
scarcely veiled, of the great Eleusinian mysteries. Others saw in Dido
the love-passion and the fate of Cleopatra, Antony in Turnus, the flight
of Marius to the marshes in the person of Sinon, the miserable end of
Pompey in Priam--
“The head shorn off, the trunk without a name.”
It is impossible to enjoy either Homer or Virgil, if their text is to be
“improved” at every step after this sort. Augustus and Octavia looked to
the poet for a tale of the olden time, and he told it well. No doubt he
threw in graceful compliments to Rome and its ruler; but to have to
guess at some hidden meaning all along would have been far too severe a
tax on the imperial audience, and would certainly not heighten the
enjoyment of modern readers.
One would be glad to know what was the view that was really taken by
that profligate court on the one hand, and by the poet himself on the
other, of the theological machinery of the poem; those powerful and
passionate Genii who pull the wires of the human puppets to gratify
their own preferences and hatreds, and are themselves the slaves of an
awful Fate which overrides them all. Wherever Justice had fled from the
earth, as the legend ran, in those pagan days, she had not found refuge
in heaven. The human virtues which Virgil gives his heroes were no
copies of anything celestial. Such lessons as the “gods” taught were
chiefly perfidy and revenge. For men of intellect and of a pure
life--and such is credibly said to have been Virgil’s--the only
salvation lay in utter unbelief of such a creed; or, at most, a stoical
submission to that Unknown Fate which ruled all things human and divine.
But even when the forms and creeds of religion had become a mockery, the
rule of right, however warped, was recognised--in fiction, if not in
fact: and Virgil, though for some reason he declined to paint the true
hero at full length, has enabled us to pick out his component parts from
his sketches of a dozen characters.
END OF VIRGIL.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] One story of this kind is perhaps curious enough for insertion.
Virgil is said to have been startled one day by a voice calling to him
out of a small hole in a cave. It proceeded from an Evil Spirit who had
been conjured into that place of confinement, and who undertook to show
Virgil certain books of necromancy on condition of his release. The
bargain was made, and the condition fulfilled. “He stood before Virgil
like a mighty man, whereof Virgil was afraid; and he marvelled greatly
that so great a man might come out of so little a hole. Then said
Virgil, ‘Should ye well pass through the hole that ye came out of?’ And
he said, ‘Yes.’ ‘I hold the best pledge that I have that ye cannot do
it.’ The devill said, ‘I consent thereto.’ And then the devill wrang
himself into the little hole again. And when he was in, then Virgil
closed him there again, so that he had no power to come out again, but
there abideth still.”--[‘Of the Lyfe of Virgilius and his deth, and the
many marvayles that he dyd.’]
[2] It has been thought that the friend of whom Horace speaks (Sat. I.
3, 31), under whose somewhat slovenly dress and rustic bearing lay hid
so much talent and worth, may have been Virgil.
[3] It is not difficult to believe that in the old time-worn beeches
overhanging the stream we have the actual landscape of the poet’s farm.
[4] Probably the comet which appeared after Julius Cæsar’s death, and
which the poet takes to announce a new era of peace and happiness for
Rome. The English reader may remember that a new star was said to have
appeared at the accession of Charles II., from which equally happy
auguries were drawn--and were equally disappointed.
[5] _Anglicè_, “Bright-eyes.”
[6] No. 378.
[7] ΙΗΣΟΥΕ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ. He also quotes other “Sibylline”
verses from the Greek of Lactantius, referring to the crucifixion.--De
Civ. Dei, xviii. 23.
[8] The duration is variously estimated--from 2489 to 18,000 years. See
Conington’s note.
[9] This fine passage--much of the beauty of which is necessarily lost
in this attempt at a translation--has been often imitated, not least
successfully by Thomson, in the eulogy upon his native island with
which he begins the fifth book of his poem on “Liberty.”
[10] When we find, in a modern manual, even directions “How to tame
vicious bees,” it is hard to say what a master of beecraft can _not_
do.--See Mr Pettigrew’s clever and amusing ‘Handy Book.’
[11] Jules Legris.
[12] ‘Fall of Rome,’ iv. 576.
[13] The following pedigree is mythical--as pedigrees often are:
Tros.
|
+------------------+------------------+
Ilus. Assaracus.
| |
Laomedon. Capys.
| |
Priam. Anchises.
|
Æneas.
[14] Iliad, xx. 306.
[15] The extracts are in all cases (where not otherwise marked) from
Mr Conington’s translation, and are made with the permission of his
representatives and publishers.
[16] Milton has translated the line almost literally:--
“In heavenly spirits could such perversion dwell?”
--Par. Lost, vi.
[17] Dante in his Inferno punishes Sinon with an eternal
sweating-sickness: a singular penalty, which is shared only by
Potiphar’s wife.--Inf. xxx.
[18] Nay, the “crests” spoken of seem to have been (as reported of the
modern sea-serpent) of actual hair; since Pindar, as Conington has
noted, calls them “manes.”
[19] The French word “_feu_,” used of a person deceased, is probably
from this Latin use of “_fui_.”
[20] For this reason, says Macrobius, the real name of Rome and of its
guardian deity was always kept a secret.
[21] Horrible as the legend is, Spenser thought it worth adopting. The
Red-Cross Knight, to make a garland for Fidessa, tears branches from
the tree that had once been Fradubio.--’Faery Queen,’ I. ii. 30.
[22] The story of Idomeneus, according to the old annotators upon
Virgil, has a curious similarity to that of Jephthah. He had vowed that
if he escaped from a storm at sea, he would offer in sacrifice the
first thing that met him on landing. It was his son. A plague followed,
and his subjects expelled him.
[23] There is a fine description of these hags in Morris’s ‘Jason,’
where the voyagers
“Beheld the daughters of the Earth and Sea,
The dreadful Snatchers, who like women were
Down to the breast, with scanty close black hair
About their heads, and dim eyes ringed with red,
And bestial mouths set round with lips of lead.
But from their gnarled necks there ’gan to spring
Half hair, half feathers, and a sweeping wing
Grew out instead of arm on either side,
And thick plumes underneath the breast did hide
The place where joined the fearful natures twain.
[24] See Homer’s Odyssey, p. 69.
[25]
“To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,
Had come to languish.”
--SHAKESPEARE, ‘As you Like it,’ ii. 1.
[26] This was the dye procured from the shell-fish called
murex--especially costly, because each fish contained but a single drop
of the precious tincture.
[27] Delille’s fine translation of this passage is so little known to
English readers that it may well find room in a note:--
“Non--tu n’es point le fils de la mère d’Amour;
Au sang de Dardanus tu ne dois point le jour;
N’impute point aux dieux la naissance d’un traitre--
Non, du sang d’héros un monstre n’a pu naître;
Non.--Le Caucase affreux, t’engendrant en fureur,
De ses plus durs rochers fit ton barbare cœur,
Et du tigre inhumain la compagne sauvage,
Cruel! avec son lait t’a fait sucer sa rage.
Car enfin qui m’arrête? Après ses durs refus,
Après tant de mépris, qu’attendrais-je de plus?
S’est-il laissé flechir à mes cris douloureux?
A-t-il au moins daigné tourner vers moi les yeux
Prosternée a ses pieds, plaintive, suppliante,
N’a-t-il pas d’un front calme ecouté son amante?
* * * * *
Sans secours, sans asile, errant de mers en mers,
Par les flots en courroux jeté dans nos deserts,
Je l’ai reçu, l’ingrat! des fureurs de l’orage
J’ai sauvé ses sujets, ses vaisseaux de naufrage,
Je lui donne mon cœur, mon empire, ma main:
O fureur, et voilà que ce monstre inhumain
Ose imputer aux dieux son horrible parjure,
Me parle et d’Apollon, et d’oracle, et d’augure!
Pour presser son depart, l’ambassadeur des dieux
Est descendu vers lui de la voûte des cieux:
Dignes soins, en effet, de ces maîtres du monde!
En effet, sa grandeur trouble leur paix profonde!
--C’en est assez; va, pars; je ne te retiens pas;
Va chercher loin de moi je ne sais quels états:
S’il est encore un dieu redoubtable aux ingrats,
J’espère que bientôt, pour prix d’un si grand crime,
Brisé contre un écueil, plongé dans un abîme,
Tu paîras mes malheurs, perfide! et de Didon
Ta voix, ta voix plaintive invoquera le nom.”
[28] One of the Roman sea-deities.
[29] Such explanations of an unfavourable result are not entirely
unknown in the annals of modern boat-races. Reasons of a very
apocryphal kind, if not so boldly mythological, have been assigned
by modern captains of crews for their having been beaten. When an
unsuccessful oarsman recounts his deeds to a sympathetic audience, and
“tells how fields were” _not_ won, he is apt to complain that, in some
form or other, the river-gods were unjust. The state of the tide, or an
intruding barge, or an imprudent supper on the part of “No. 7,” takes
the place of Panope and Portunus.
[30] “Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.”
[31] Virgil himself has no word of reproach for these weaker spirits,
who thus preferred the rest of Sicily to the far-off hopes of Hesperia.
But his impassioned pupil Dante is less merciful: he classes them in
his “Purgatory” with the murmuring Israelites:--
“First they died, to whom the sea
Opened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;
And they who with Æneas to the end
Endured not suffering, for their portion chose
Life without glory.”
--Purg. xviii. (Cary.)
[32] Keble.
[33] The rickety state of Charon’s boat was always a fertile source of
wit to the freethinkers among the classical satirists. Lucian, in one
of his very amusing dialogues, makes Charon complain of his passengers
bringing luggage with them: “My boat is something rotten, look you, and
lets in a good deal of water at the seams; if you come on board with
all that luggage you may repent it--especially those of you who can’t
swim.”--(Dial. Mort., x.) So in another dialogue Menippus thinks it
hard to be asked to pay for his passage over, when “he helped to bale
the boat all the way.” It maybe observed that the boat is said to be
made of hide, stretched on a wooden frame, like the “coracles” of the
Britons, still in use on some of the Welsh rivers. There may be some
connection with an ancient tradition which would identify the “white
rock” of which Homer speaks (Od., xxiv. 11) as marking the entrance to
the regions of the dead with the cliffs of our own island--“Albion.”
A curious old legend of the coast of France gives some colour to the
interpretation. There was a tribe of fishermen who were exempted from
payment of tribute, on the ground that they ferried over into Britain
the souls of the departed. At nightfall, when they were asleep (so the
legend ran), they would be awakened by a loud knocking at their doors,
and voices calling them, and feel a strange compulsion to go down to
the seashore. There they found boats, not their own, ready launched,
and to all appearance empty. “When they stepped on board and began to
ply their oars they found the boats move as though they were heavily
laden, sinking within a finger’s breadth of the water’s edge; but they
saw no man. Within an hour, as it seemed, they reached the opposite
coast--a voyage which in their own boats they hardly made in a whole
day and night. When they touched the shore of Britain still they saw
no shape, but they heard voices welcoming their ghostly passengers,
and calling each of the dead by name and rank. Then having got rid, as
it seemed, of their invisible freight, they put off again for home,
feeling their boats so sensibly lightened that hardly more than the
keel touched the water.--See Gesner’s Notes on Claudian, iii. 123;
Procopius, De Bell. Goth., iv. 20.
[34] We have here the foundation of the fanciful doctrine of a Limbo
Infantum, held by some doctors of the Romish Church--a kind of
vestibule to the greater Purgatory, in which were placed the souls of
such children as died before they were old enough to be admitted to the
sacraments.
[35]
“Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes reappears;
Round the dear shade she would have clung--’tis vain,
The hours are past--too brief, had they been years;
And him no mortal effort can detain:
Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day,
He through the portal takes his silent way,
And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse she lay.
“By no weak pity might the gods be moved;
She who thus perished, not without the crime
Of lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,
Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowers
Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.”
--WORDSWORTH’S ‘Laodamia.’
[36] But none of the recognised translations seem to come so near the
spirit of the original as Lord Macaulay’s paraphrase--for of course it
is only a paraphrase--in his lay of “The Prophecy of Capys:”--
“Leave to the sons of Carthage
The rudder and the oar;
Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs
And scrolls of wordy lore:
Thine, Roman, is the pilum;
Roman, the sword is thine;
The even trench, the bristling mound,
The legion’s ordered line.”
[37] Virgil is said to have received from her what would amount, in our
money, to above £2000--“a round sum,” remarks Dryden, with something
like professional envy, “for twenty-seven verses.”
[38] See p. 66.
[39] Andrew Marvell most likely borrowed his thought from the Roman
poet in his graceful lines, “The Nymph’s Complaint:”--
“The wanton troopers, riding by,
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne’er didst alive
Them any harm, alas! nor could
Thy death yet do them any good.”
[40] No doubt the Camilla of the Roman poet is a reminiscence of the
Amazon Penthesilea in Homer, just as the fairy footstep, that left
no trace on sea or land, is borrowed from those wondrous mares of
Ericthonius to whom Homer assigns the same performance. But the copy
far surpasses the original in grace and beauty. Our English poets have
made free use of this fancy of the footsteps of beauty: none more
sweetly than Jonson in his ‘Sad Shepherd,’ where Æglamour laments his
lost Earinè:--
“Here she was wont to go, and here, and here--
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow;
The world may find the spring by following her,
For other print her airy steps ne’er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-bell from his stalk:
But like the south-west wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.”
--The ‘Sad Shepherd,’ Act I. sc. 1.
[41] The thunderbolt is usually represented on ancient coins and
medallions with twelve rays.
[42] Dido has always been a favourite heroine with Frenchmen, and
has been worked up into three or four tragedies. One writer, partly
adopting M. Segrais’s notion of how things ought to have been--that is
to say, how a Frenchman would have behaved himself when such a parting
was inevitable--has made Æneas take at least a civil farewell of the
injured queen:--
“Helas! si de mon sort j’avais ici mon choix,
Bornant à vous aimer le bonheur de ma vie,
Je tiendrais de vos mains un sceptre, une patrie:
Les dieux m’ont envie le seul de leurs bienfaits,
Qui pourait réparer tous les maux qu’ils m’ont faits.”
And Dido, mollified by this declaration, far from cursing the fugitive
lover in her last moments, assures him of her unchangeable affection,
rather apologising for having so inconveniently fallen in his way, and
delayed him so improperly from Lavinia and his kingdom:--
“Et toi, d’ont j’ai troublée la haute destinée,
Toi, qui ne m’entends plus--adieux, mon cher Ænée!
Ne crains point ma colere--elle expire avec moi,
Et mes derniers soupirs sont encore pour toi!”{*}
{*} Le Franc de Pompignan, “Didon.”
[43] Prælect., ii. 724.
[44] P. 124.