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MEZENTIUS

405

gives way to manly sorrow for the mute companion of his warfare,' indicative of a bolder invention than that which is usually ascribed to Virgil. It is remarkable that poets whose spirit is most purely religious,-both in the strength of conviction and the limitation of sympathy produced by the religious spirit-Aeschylus, Virgil, and Milton-seem to be moved to their most energetic creativeness by the idea of antagonism to the supreme will on the part of a human, or superhuman but limited will: and that they cannot help raising in their readers a glow of admiration as well as a sense of awe in their embodiment of this clash between finite and infinite power. The sketch of Mezentius cannot indeed be compared with two of the most daring conceptions and perfected creations of human genius,-the Prometheus of Aeschylus and the Satan of Milton,—yet, if it does not enlist our ethical sympathies like the former of these, like the second it receives the tribute of that involuntary admiration, which is given to courage, even when allied with moral evil, so long as it is not absolutely divorced from the capability of sympathetic and elevated emotion.

In the part which Dido plays in the poem, Virgil finds a source of interest in which he had not been anticipated by Homer. And although the passion of love, unreturned or betrayed, had supplied a motive to the later Greek tragedy and to the Alexandrine epic, it was still not impossible for a new poet to represent this phase of modern life with more power and pathos than any of his predecessors. It was comparatively easy to produce a more noble and vital impersonation than the Medea of Apollonius. But the Dido of Virgil may compare favourably with the creations of greater masters, with the Deianeira of Sophocles, with the Phaedra and the Medea of Euripides. And Virgil's conception is at once more impassioned than that of Sophocles, and nobler and more womanly than those of Euripides. Her character, as it is represented before the disturbing influence of this new passion produced by supernatural artifice, is that of a brave

and loyal, a great and queenly, a pure, trusting, and compassionate nature. The most tragic element in the development of her love for Aeneas is the struggle which it involves with her high-strung sense of fidelity to the dead

Ille meos primus qui me sibi iunxit amores

Abstulit ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro1.

The first feeling awakened in her mind by Aeneas is compassion for his sufferings, and the desire to make the Trojans sharers in the fortune which had attended her own enterprise. When by the unsuspected agency of the two goddesses she has been possessed by the fatal passion, it is to no ignoble influence that she succumbs. It is the greatness and renown of one whom she recognises as of the race of the gods, which exercise a spell over her imagination

Multa viri virtus animo, multusque recursat
Gentis honos; haerent infixi pectore voltus

Verbaque, nec placidam membris dat cura quietem 2.

No weakness, no unwomanly ferocity mingles with the reproaches which she utters on first awakening to the betrayal of her trust. A feeling of magnanimous scorn makes her rise in rebellion against the plea that her desertion was the result of divine interposition—

Scilicet is Superis labor est! ea cura quietos
Sollicitat 3;

and a lofty pathos animates her trust in a righteous retribution, the knowledge of which will comfort her among the dead

Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,
Supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido

Saepe vocaturum. Sequar atris ignibus absens,

Et, cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus,

1 'He who first won my love has taken it with him: let him keep it and treasure it in his tomb.'

2 Often his own heroic spirit, often the glory of his race, recur to her mind: his looks remain deep-printed in her heart, and his words, nor does her passion allow her to rest.'

3 That forsooth is the task of the Powers above; this trouble vexes their tranquil state.'

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THE PASSION OF DIDO

Omnibus umbra locis adero :-dabis, improbe, poenas :
Audiam, et haec Manes veniet mihi fama sub imos'.

407

The awe inspired by supernatural portents, by restless visions in the night, by the memory of ancient prophecies, by the voice of her former husband summoning her from the chapel consecrated to his Manes, confirms her in her resolution to die. Her passion goes on deepening in alternations of indignation and recurring tenderness. It reaches its sublimest elevation in the prayer for vengeance, answered long afterwards in the alarm and desolation inflicted upon Italy by the greatest of the sons of Carthage

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,

Qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos,

Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore vires 2.

In her last moments she finds consolation in the great memories of her life

Urbem praeclaram statui: mea moenia vidi:
Ulta virum, poenas inimico a fratre recepi:

Felix, heu! nimium felix, si litora tantum

Nunquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae 3.

Her latest prayer is that, even though no outward retribution overtake her betrayer, yet the bitterness of his own heart may be her avenger—

moriemur inultae,

Sed moriamur, ait: sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et secum nostrae ferat omina mortis 1.

1 'I trust indeed, if the pitiful Gods avail aught, that among the rocks in mid sea thou shalt drink deep of the cup of retribution, and often call on Dido by name; I, from far away, will follow thee with baleful fires, and when chill death has separated my spirit from my frame, my shade will haunt thee everywhere; heartless, thou shalt suffer for thy crime: I shall hear of it, and this tale will reach me among the spirits below.'

2 Arise thou, some avenger, out of my bones, who with brand and sword mayest chase the settlers from Troy, now, hereafter, whensoever there shall be strength to bring thee forth.'

I have built a famous city: I have seen my own walls arise: avenging my husband, I exacted retribution from an unkind brother; fortunate, alas too fortunate, had not the Trojan keels ever touched our shore.'

* 'I shall die unavenged,' she says, 'still let me die-it is thus, thus, I fain would pass to the shades; may the cruel Trojan drink in with his eyes

Once more she appears among the Shades, and maintains her lofty bearing there as in the world above. No sympathy with his hero makes the poet here forget what was due to her. She listens in scornful silence to the tearful protestations of her 'false friend',' and passes on without any sign of forgiveness or reconciliation

Tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit

In nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi
Respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem 2.

V.

That the passion of Dido is powerfully conceived and delineated, that it satisfies modern feeling more legitimately than the representation of the unhallowed impulses of Phaedra, or of the cruel and treacherous rancour of Medea, will scarcely be questioned. Yet perhaps it is doing no injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving some state of feeling, some pathetic or passionate situation, rather than in the creation and sustained development of living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations than the personages of history or those whom we know in life, come into being, is a question which probably their authors themselves could not answer. Though reflexion on human nature and deliberate intention to exemplify some law of life may precede the creative act which gives them being, and though continued reflexion may be needed to sustain

the sight of this fire from the deep, and carry along with him the omen of my death.'

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'Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood,
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

From her false friend's approach in Hades, turn,

Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.'

The Scholar Gipsy, by Matthew Arnold.

At length she started away and fled unforgiving into the shades of the forest, where her former husband, Sychaeus, feels with all her sorrows and loves her with a love equal to her own.'

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ORATORICAL IMAGINATION

409 them in a consistent course, yet no mere analytic insight into the springs of action can explain the process by which a great artist works. The beings of his imagination seem to acquire an existence independent of the experience and of the deliberate intentions of their author, and to inform this experience and mould these intentions as much as they are informed and moulded by them. Virgil's imagination in the creation of Dido seems to be possessed in this way. She grows more and more real as her passion deepens. Virgil's intention in this representation may have been to show the tragic infatuation of a woman's love

furens quid femina possit:

but his sympathetic insight into this passion-an insight already shown in the Eclogues-stimulates the forces of his imagination to a nobler as well as a more vital creation than in any other of his impersonations. Dido ranks for all times as one of the great heroines of poetry. So long as she appears on the scene the interest in the exhibition of her nature overpowers all other interests. But this is not the case with Virgil's other personages. We are more interested in what they say and in what happens to them than in what they are. In other words, it is by his oratorical and descriptive, rather than by his dramatic faculty, that he secures the attention of his readers. As oratory was one of the most important powers in ancient life, so it became a prominent element in ancient epic and dramatic poetry,-in Homer, Ennius, and Virgil, as well as in Sophocles, Euripides, and the Roman tragedians. The oratory of the Aeneid shows nothing of the speculative power-of the application of great ideas to life—which gives the profoundest value not only to many speeches in Sophocles, but also to some of those in the Iliad, and notably to such as proceed from the mouth of Odysseus. It cannot equal the vivid naturalness of the speeches of Nestor, nor the impassioned grandeur of those of Achilles. Neither is it characterised by the subtle psychological analysis which is the most interesting quality in the rhetoric of Euripides. On the other hand, it is not disfigured

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