CHAPTER XII.THE DEATH OF CAMILLA.

“So like, the sweet confusion e’enTheir parents’ eyes betrayed;But Pallas twin and twin betweenHas cruel difference made;For Thymber’s head the steel has shorn;Larides’ severed hand forlornFeels blindly for its lord:The quivering fingers, half alive,Twitch with convulsive gripe, and striveTo close upon the sword.”

Young Lausus, the son of the tyrant Mezentius, is leading his men against Pallas, when a greater soldier interposes between the two young heroes. Turnus comes, and Pallas meets him eagerly—yet not without full consciousness of the inequality of the combat. He hurls his spear, so strongly and truly that it penetrates through Turnus’s shield, and slightly grazes his body. Then Turnus launches his weapon in return, and it goes right through the metal plates and tough ox-hide of the shield, and through the corselet of Pallas, deep into his breast, and the young prince falls to the ground writhing in his dying agony. Turnus stands astride of the corpse, and shouts triumphantly to the discomfited Arcadians. Yet there is something generous, according to the fierce code of the times, in his treatment of his dead enemy; he neither strips the armour, nor makes any attempt to prevent the Arcadians from carrying off the body. He bids them bear it home to King Evander for burial; only with a warning as to what fate awaits the allies of the foreigner:—

“Who to Æneas plays the host,Must square the glory with the cost.”

One trophy he takes from the person of the dead prince—a belt richly embroidered in gold with the tale of the daughters of Danaus. He girds it on over his armour, unconscious of the influence it will have upon his own fate.

Æneas, in a different quarter of the field, hears of the death of his young esquire, and furiously hews his way towards Turnus. All who cross his path, veteran chiefs and young aspirants to glory, alike go down before him, and no appeal for mercy checks his hand. Eight prisoners he takes alive; but only with the intent to slay them as victims at the funeral pile of Pallas. But the rival champions do not meet as yet. Juno, fearing the issue of an encounter with Æneas in his present mood, cheats the eyes of Turnus with a phantom in his enemy’s shape. When Turnus meets it in the fight, the shape turns and flies towards the ships, pursued by him with bitter taunts on Trojan cowardice. One galley has her gangway down, and the false Æneas takes refuge on board. Turnus follows; when the moorings are loosed by an invisible hand, the galley floats down stream, and the Rutulian, raving and half determined to end his disgrace by suicide when he finds out how he has been cheated, is swept along the coast to his own town of Ardea.

Mezentius takes his place, and seconded by his son Lausus, spreads slaughter amongst the Trojan ranks. But a spear cast by the strong hand of Æneas lodges in the groin of the father, and the son gallantly rushes forward to cover his retreat. Æneas warns the youth to stand back—some thought, it may be, of Pallas makes him unwilling to take the younger life; but Lausus dares his fate, and the Trojan falchion, driven home through his light shield and broidered vest—

“The vest his mother wove with gold”—

reaches the young chief’s heart. Æneas can be generous too. He will not strip the body; nay, he chides the cowardice of Lausus’s comrades, who hesitate to lift the dying youth, and himself raises him carefully from the ground, and gives him what comfort may be gathered from the fact that he has met his death “at Æneas’s hand.”

Mezentius hears of the death of his son as he lies by the river-bank bathing his wound. “With a cry of agony the father bewails his own crimes, which had thus brought death upon his innocent son. Crippled as he is, he calls for his good horse Rhæbus, who has ever hitherto borne him home victor from the battle. To-day they two will carry home the head of Æneas, or fall together. He charges desperately upon the Trojan, who is right glad to meet him. Thrice he wheels his horse round his wary enemy, hurling javelin after javelin, which the Vulcanian shield receives on its broad circumference, and retains until it looks, in the poet’s language, like a grove of steel. At last Æneas launches a spear which strikes Mezentius’s horse full in the forehead, and poor Rhæbus rears, and rolling over in his dying agonies, pins his master to the ground. Æneas rushes in upon the fallen champion, who, disdaining to ask quarter, bares his throat to the sword, and dies as fearlessly as he has lived.

Æneas’sfirst care, after raising a trophy crowned with the arms of the slain Mezentius, is to send home to Evander the body of his son. A picked detachment escort it to Laurentum with all honour, wrapped in robes of gold—embroidered robes, wrought by the hands of the unfortunate Dido. The youth’s charger, Æthon, is led behind the bier, and his lance and helm are also borne in the procession; a custom which we have borrowed from the Romans, and retain to this day in our military funerals. Æthon weeps copious tears for his dead master; an incident not so entirely due to a poet’s imagination as it may seem, since the historian Suetonius tells us that some favourite horses of Julius Cæsar showed the same tokens of grief, and refused their food, just before his death. Another feature in the obsequies of Pallas is happily obsolete; the prisoners whom Æneas had taken alive with this express object follow behind the corpse, to be sacrificed at the funeral pile. There was nothing horrible to the polished courtiers of Augustus in such a thought. Evenin that age of refinement and civilisation, the emperor himself, after the defeat of Antony’s party at Perusia, was said to have slaughtered three hundred prisoners in honour of the great Julius, to whom altars were raised as a demi-god. True, the story was probably an invention of political opponents; but the mere fact that such a story could be invented and believed, marks strongly the cruel temper of the age. The old king receives back, in bitter grief, all that remains to him of the gallant son whom he had so lately sent forth to his first fatal field: and he charges Æneas, by the mouth of the envoys, to avenge him on his son’s murderer—for this he only waits to close his own eyes.

A truce of twelve days is agreed upon between the armies for the burial of their dead. The Latins have meanwhile sent an embassy to ask aid from Diomed, the hero of the Trojan war, who has come home and settled in Italy. He is paying the penalty of having wounded Venus in the battle before Troy, and is not allowed to reach his native Argolis. He warns the ambassadors that it is not good to war against the race from which Æneas comes—he, for his part, will have no more of it. At this crisis the Latins hold a council of war. Their king advises a compromise with the enemy—a grant of land on which to settle, or a new equipped fleet to carry the fortunes of Troy yet further on. Then there rises in the council one Drances, a better orator than warrior, who boldly proposes to give the princess Lavinia to the bridegroom whom the gods have sent. Or, let Turnus meet Æneas in singlecombat—why are the rest to suffer for his pride? Is all Latium to be steeped in blood that Turnus may have a princess to wife? Turnus is not slow to reply. He will go forth to meet the Trojan willingly—will Drances follow him?

Even while they thus debate, Æneas has left his intrenchments by the Tiber, and is marching on the city. The queen with her daughter and the terrified women betake themselves to the temples, while Turnus sets himself to marshal his allies for the defence. While some are left to guard the walls, the whole force of cavalry ride out to meet the enemy. His best lieutenant for this service is the huntress Camilla. She leads her light Volscian horse, supported by Messapus with his heavier Latins, to meet the cavalry of Æneas, while Turnus with his squadron lays an ambuscade for him in a wooded valley. Camilla, with her fair staff of followers, Tulla and Tarpeia—names of ominous sound to Roman ears—deals slaughter in the enemy’s ranks in no feminine fashion.

“A Phrygian mother mourned her sonFor every dart that flew.”

But, fierce Amazon as she is, she is tempted by a woman’s love of ornament. There is a Trojan, one Chlorus, priest as well as man-at-arms, conspicuous for the brilliant accoutrements of his charger and himself. His horse is covered with chain-armour clasped with gold; and purple and saffron, and gold embroidery—the full splendours of Asiatic costume which he affects—mark him out as a tempting prey. It might havebeen, the poet suggests, a desire to deck some of her national temples with such distinguished spoils,—or it might have been, he admits, only a woman’s fancy to wear them herself,—but she singles him out and chases him over the field, regardless of her own safety. Arruns the Tuscan has long sought his opportunity, and his spear reaches Camilla as she gallops in headlong pursuit of her gay enemy.

“In vain she strives with dying handsTo wrench away the blade:Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,Closed by the wound it made.Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath;Her heavy eyes sink down in death;Her cheek’s bright colours fade.”

So dies Camilla; and the Volscian horse are so disheartened by her loss that they turn and fly to the city, so closely pursued by the Trojans that the gates have to be hastily closed, shutting out in many cases friends as well as foes. Turnus leaves the cover of the wood to attack Æneas, but night falls on the plain before their forces meet.

Thespirit of the Latins is wellnigh broken—they feel that their cause is a failing one. And Turnus sees angry eyes bent upon him, as the cause of this ill-fated war. He will take all hazards, then, upon himself: there shall be no more blood shed of Latin or Rutulian—unless it be his own. He declares his intention to Latinus—he will meet Æneas in single combat. The old king is reluctant to allow it: Queen Amata, with tears and prayers, begs him to forego his resolution. Lavinia herself—such is the entire reticence of the maiden nature in epic story—speaks no word throughout the whole. But, as modern critics have long discovered, there is no question but that she has a sentiment for Turnus. She hardly could have a thought of Æneas, whom she had never seen. When she hears her mother’s appeal to the Rutulian prince, she does almost more than speak—she blushes, through her tears.

“Deep crimson glows the sudden flame,And dyes her tingling cheek with shame.So blushes ivory’s Indian grain,When sullied with vermilion stain:So lilies set in roseate bedEnkindle with contagious red.”

These last four lines, in Mr Conington’s version, read like a bit of Waller or Lovelace—and yet they are a fairly close translation of the original.

The challenge is sent to Æneas, and by him joyfully accepted. There shall be solemn truce between Trojan and Rutulian, while the rival champions do battle for the princess and the kingdom. Turnus, too, has one weapon of Vulcan’s forging—his father’s sword. But now, in his haste for the combat, he snatches up and girds on a blade of less divine temper. The lists are set between the two lines, and the oaths duly sworn. Æneas calls the gods to witness, that if the victory falls to Turnus, the Trojans on their part shall retire at once to Evander’s colony, and make war no more on Latium. Or even if he himself be the conqueror, he will not treat the Latins as a conquered race:—

“I will not force Italia’s landTo Teucrian rule to bow;I seek no sceptre for my hand,No diadem for my brow:Let race and race, unquelled and free,Join hands in deathless amity.”

But at once, before the rivals meet, by the instigation of Juno the truce is broken on the part of the Rutulians. They have a strong fear that their own champion, young and gallant as he is, is no equalmatch in arms for the great Æneas: he is but moving to his death. So speaks the seer Tolumnius, and points to an omen on the river-bank: an eagle swooping down upon a flock of swans, and bearing one off in his talons, but put to flight when they turn in a body and pursue him. Æneas is the bird of prey—they are the unwarlike swans; let them but turn on him, and he too will fly. The seer is not content with the mere exposition of auguries; at once he hurls his own javelin into the Trojan ranks, and brings down his man. The fight speedily becomes general. Æneas, unarmed and bareheaded, rushes between the ranks, and is wounded by an arrow while he calls loudly on his own men to keep the truce. None knew, or cared to know, from whose hand the arrow came: for no man, says the poet, was ever heard to boast of such a coward’s shot.

Then, while Æneas is led to the camp, faint and bleeding, by his son lulus and his faithful Achates,—while the aged leech, Iapis, vainly tries all his skill upon the wound—for the barb will not quit the flesh,—Turnus spreads slaughter among the Trojan ranks. But only for a while. Venus drops a healing balsam into the water with which her son’s wound is being bathed; at once the arrow-head drops out, and the hero stands up sound and whole. Again he dons the Vulcanian armour, and re-enters the battle. The Rutulians give way before him, but he scorns to smite the fugitives, and seeks out only Turnus. And Turnus, pale and unnerved—for the presage of his fate lies heavy upon his soul—has no longer any mind tomeet him. It is very strange, to our modern notions of heroism, to see this infirmity of resolution in a tried soldier and captain like Turnus. But the heroes of these elder days lose heart at once when they feel their star is no longer in the ascendant. Turnus, like Hector in the Iliad, shrinks from the fate which he foresees.

Turnus has a sister, Juturna, a river-nymph and demi-goddess, a favourite of Juno, who has warned her if possible to save her brother. She now takes the place of his charioteer, and, while she drives rapidly over the field, takes care to keep him far from Æneas, who is calling loudly on him to halt and keep his compact of personal duel. At last the Trojan leader, baffled in this object, throws all his forces suddenly on the town, which lies almost at his mercy, stripped of its defenders, and bids his captains bring torches and scaling-ladders. A horseman, sorely wounded in the face, brings word of this new danger to Turnus as he is wheeling madly over the battle-field, and implores him to come to the rescue. He looks round towards the walls, and sees the flames already mounting. Then he rallies once more the old courage which had so strangely failed him. He sees his fate as clearly as before, but he will meet it. He knows his sister now, too late, in his charioteer; but he will fly no longer—“Is death such great wretchedness, after all?” He leaps from his chariot, as he knows, to meet it, lifts his hand, and shouts to his Rutulians to stay their hands, and the ranks of both armies divide before him as he makes towardsthe part of the wall where Æneas is leading the attack.

“But great Æneas, when he hearsThe challenge of his foe,The leaguer of the town forbears,Lets town and rampart go,Steps high with exultation proud,And thunders on his arms aloud;Vast as majestic Athos, vastAs Eryx the divine,Or he that roaring with the blastHeaves his huge bulk in snow-drifts massed,The father Apennine.”

Trojans, Latins, and Rutulians look on in awe and admiration as the two chiefs advance to try this last ordeal of battle. Each hurl their spears—without effect; then Turnus draws his sword, and they fight on hand to hand—

“Giving and taking wounds alike,With furious impact home they strike;Shoulder and neck are bathed in gore:The forest depths return the roar.So, shield on shield, together dashÆneas and his Daunian foe;The echo of that deafening crashMounts heavenward from below.”

But the faithless sword which Turnus had so carelessly girded on instead of his father’s good weapon, though it has done him fair service on the crowd of meaner enemies, breaks in his grasp when he essays it on thearmour of Æneas, and thus helpless, he takes to flight, Æneas hotly pursuing.

“Five times they circle round the place,Five times the winding course retrace;No trivial game is here: the strifeIs waged for Turnus’ own dear life.”

A dark-plumaged bird is seen to hover round the devoted head of the Rutulian chief, half blinding him with its flapping wings. It is a Fury whom the king of the gods has sent in that shape to harass him. At length, in his flight, he finds a huge stone, which not twelve men of “to-day’s degenerate sons” could lift.

“He caught it up, and at his foeDischarged it, rising to the throw,And straining as he runs.But ’wildering fears his mind unman;Running, he knew not that he ran,Nor throwing that he threw;Heavily move his sinking knees;The streams of life wax dull and freeze:The stone, as through the void it past,Failed of the measure of its cast,Nor held its purpose true.E’en as in dreams, when on the eyesThe drowsy weight of slumber lies,In vain to ply our limbs we think,And in the helpless effort sink;Tongue, sinews, all, their powers bely,And voice and speech our call defy:So, labour Turnus as he will,The Fury mocks the endeavour still.Dim shapes before his senses reel:On host and town he turns his sight:He quails, he trembles at the steel,Nor knows to fly, nor knows to fight:Nor to his pleading eyes appearThe car, the sister charioteer.“The deadly dart Æneas shakes:His aim with stern precision takes,Then hurls with all his frame;Less loud from battering-engine castRoars the fierce stone, less loud the blastFollows the lightning’s flame.On rushes as with whirlwind wingsThe spear that dire destruction brings,Makes passage through the corselet’s marge,And enters the seven-plated targeWhere the last ring runs round.The keen point pierces through the thigh,Down on his bent knee heavilyComes Turnus to the ground.”

“The deadly dart Æneas shakes:His aim with stern precision takes,Then hurls with all his frame;Less loud from battering-engine castRoars the fierce stone, less loud the blastFollows the lightning’s flame.On rushes as with whirlwind wingsThe spear that dire destruction brings,Makes passage through the corselet’s marge,And enters the seven-plated targeWhere the last ring runs round.The keen point pierces through the thigh,Down on his bent knee heavilyComes Turnus to the ground.”

The Rutulian prince confesses his defeat, and asks his life, in no craven spirit, for the sake of his aged father—bidding Æneas think of old Anchises. The conqueror half relents, when his eyes fall upon something which makes that appeal worse than useless.

“Rolling his eyes, Æneas stood,And checked his sword, athirst for blood.Now faltering more and more he feltThe human heart within him melt,When round the shoulder wreathed in prideThe belt of Pallas he espied,And sudden flashed upon his viewThose golden studs so well he knew,Which Turnus in his hour of joyStripped from the newly-slaughtered boy,And on his bosom bore, to showThe triumph of a satiate foe.Soon as his eyes at one fell draughtRemembrance and revenge had quaffed,Live fury kindling every vein,He cries with terrible disdain:‘What! in my friend’s dear spoils arrayed,To me for mercy sue?’Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade;From your cursed blood his injured shadeThus takes the atonement due.’Thus as he spoke, his sword he draveWith fierce and fiery blowThrough the broad breast before him spread;The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead;One groan the indignant spirit gave,Then sought the shades below.”

So closes the Æneid. Does any reader complain that the poet has not carried the story further? With the death of Turnus the catastrophe is complete. The princess of Latium is the prize of the victor; and the loves of Æneas and Lavinia are certainly not of that romantic character that we need care to follow them. The Trojans are settled in Italy—two races under one name. For so has Jupiter promised, as some indulgence to the feelings of his queen, that the old Latin name shall at least not be merged in the detested name of Trojan, and on such terms has the goddess reluctantly acquiesced in the settlement of the wanderers on Italian ground. Latins, not Trojans, are to rulethe world. Thus has the poet combined the indigenous glories of his country with the grand descent of its rulers from the old mythical heroes of Troy.

Yet there is a singular vein of melancholy to be traced in the words of Æneas, when he parts with his son before he goes to his last victory. They are perhaps the noblest words which the poet has put into his mouth, and they have something of the sadness which more or less affects all true nobility:—

“In his mailed arms his child he pressed,Kissed through his helm, and thus addressed:‘Learn of your father to be great,Of others to be fortunate.’”

The old tradition—well known, no doubt, to Virgil’s audience and first readers—was that the son, not the father, lived to enjoy the sovereignty of Latium. The hero of many vicissitudes was not held to have settled down into the peaceful rest which he looks forward to, throughout the poet’s story, as the end of all his campaigns and wanderings. The Rutulians, so said the legends, would not yet bow to the foreign usurper; and Æneas fought his last battle with them on the banks of the river Numicius, and then, like so many of the favourite heroes of a people—disappeared; either carried, living or dead, by some divine agency, to heaven, or caught away in the arms of the river-god.

TheÆneid 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 courtlyraconteur, 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 thecourt 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 tragicaldénouement, 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 godswere 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 inall 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 semperfœmina!”—that the poorlady’smood 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 therybauderraised 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 onlypars 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 thefalse 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 immortalarms 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 hisfather, 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 seeHis people slain before his face:Or when to humbling peace at lengthHe 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 cannotdo.—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 wereDown to the breast, with scanty close black hairAbout 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 springHalf hair, half feathers, and a sweeping wingGrew out instead of arm on either side,And thick plumes underneath the breast did hideThe 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 yeuxProsternée 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’orageJ’ai sauvé ses sujets, ses vaisseaux de naufrage,Je lui donne mon cœur, mon empire, ma main:O fureur, et voilà que ce monstre inhumainOse imputer aux dieux son horrible parjure,Me parle et d’Apollon, et d’oracle, et d’augure!Pour presser son depart, l’ambassadeur des dieuxEst 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 DidonTa 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”notwon, 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 seaOpened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;And they who with Æneas to the endEndured not suffering, for their portion choseLife 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 crimeOf lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowersOf 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 CarthageThe rudder and the oar;Leave to the Greek his marble nymphsAnd 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 thriveWho killed thee. Thou ne’er didst aliveThem any harm, alas! nor couldThy 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.

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 cannotdo.—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:

[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.

[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 wereDown to the breast, with scanty close black hairAbout 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 springHalf hair, half feathers, and a sweeping wingGrew out instead of arm on either side,And thick plumes underneath the breast did hideThe place where joined the fearful natures twain.

[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 wereDown to the breast, with scanty close black hairAbout 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 springHalf hair, half feathers, and a sweeping wingGrew out instead of arm on either side,And thick plumes underneath the breast did hideThe 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.

[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 yeuxProsternée 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’orageJ’ai sauvé ses sujets, ses vaisseaux de naufrage,Je lui donne mon cœur, mon empire, ma main:O fureur, et voilà que ce monstre inhumainOse imputer aux dieux son horrible parjure,Me parle et d’Apollon, et d’oracle, et d’augure!Pour presser son depart, l’ambassadeur des dieuxEst 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 DidonTa 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”notwon, 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 seaOpened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;And they who with Æneas to the endEndured not suffering, for their portion choseLife 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 crimeOf lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowersOf 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 CarthageThe rudder and the oar;Leave to the Greek his marble nymphsAnd 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 thriveWho killed thee. Thou ne’er didst aliveThem any harm, alas! nor couldThy 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.

[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 yeuxProsternée 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’orageJ’ai sauvé ses sujets, ses vaisseaux de naufrage,Je lui donne mon cœur, mon empire, ma main:O fureur, et voilà que ce monstre inhumainOse imputer aux dieux son horrible parjure,Me parle et d’Apollon, et d’oracle, et d’augure!Pour presser son depart, l’ambassadeur des dieuxEst 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 DidonTa 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”notwon, 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 seaOpened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;And they who with Æneas to the endEndured not suffering, for their portion choseLife without glory.”—Purg. xviii. (Cary.)

“First they died, to whom the seaOpened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;And they who with Æneas to the endEndured not suffering, for their portion choseLife 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 crimeOf lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowersOf blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.”—Wordsworth’s‘Laodamia.’

[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 crimeOf lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowersOf blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.”—Wordsworth’s‘Laodamia.’

“By no weak pity might the gods be moved;She who thus perished, not without the crimeOf lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved,Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowersOf 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 CarthageThe rudder and the oar;Leave to the Greek his marble nymphsAnd 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.”

“Leave to the sons of CarthageThe rudder and the oar;Leave to the Greek his marble nymphsAnd 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 thriveWho killed thee. Thou ne’er didst aliveThem any harm, alas! nor couldThy death yet do them any good.”

[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 thriveWho killed thee. Thou ne’er didst aliveThem any harm, alas! nor couldThy 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.

“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.”

“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.

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