were destined to spring from the Trojan stock and, unless the course of fate could be changed, to overthrow Carthage, which she loved and protected. Therefore she persuaded Aeolus, the keeper of the winds, to let them loose on the ships of Aeneas; and though Neptune stayed the storm before it was too late, they were scattered and driven out of their course and upon the shores of Africa. Here the Trojans came to the Phoenician town of Carthage, already growing up under the sovereignty of Dido, who had fled from Tyre after the murder of her husband Sychaeus by Pygmalion, her brother, and had established herself in this new home. She received the strangers with generous hospitality, offering to give them a share in her city or to send them away in safety. Venus, however, fearful for Aeneas, her son, and distrusting Carthaginian friendship, sent Cupid to take the form of Iulus and, while he sat on Dido's knee, to inspire her with love for Aeneas. When the feast, with its music and song, was done, Aeneas told the story of the fall of Troy and of his long wanderings.

Here the fourth book of the Aeneid begins, having for its subject the love of Dido and Aeneas and its unhappy end. The eight books that follow tell of the funeral games for Anchises, celebrated in Sicily, of the coming to Cumae in Italy and the descent of Aeneas with the Sibyl to the world below, of his arrival in Latium and betrothal to Lavinia, daughter of king Latinus, and of the war with the Rutuli and Turnus their chieftain, who claimed Lavinia for himself.

THE AENEID AND THE CHARACTER OF Aeneas.

As a national epic the Aeneid is unrivalled, and apart from its supreme interest to the Romans, 'the masters of the world', and the legitimate satisfaction which it gave to their national pride, the beauty of its language, its rhetorical power, the wonderful skill of its construction, and the depth and delicacy of the poet's feeling must always ensure for it a unique position in literature. Yet, even if Virgil had not borrowed so much. from the Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as from other sources, the Aeneid must have been judged as to some of its features by comparison with them, and when such comparison is made, the poem necessarily suffers. The delight in battle and adventure could not in later time be felt as we see it described by Homer. The heroes of the Iliad go forth to the fight as if it were not only the chief business but the chief joy of their lives. Ulysses voyages into the unknown, and he may find there, if he will, all the wonders of the court of Alcinoüs, and the beauty of the island of Calypso, who would have 'made him know not death or age for ever', and the magic of Circe and the savagery of Polyphemus; but Virgil wrote at a time when society was peaceful and pleasure-loving, and the joy of battle was quite artificial; while, on the other hand, the mere spread of geographical knowledge had made the travel of Aeneas in familiar seas and lands tame and uninteresting compared with the romance of the wanderings of Ulysses.

Again, the character of Aeneas has been criticized as wanting in that vigour and resource which should mark a warrior and leader, and if he is to be judged on this ground alone, the criticism is just, as a glance at the events of the first four books of the Acneid will show. When the Greeks entered Troy and he was aroused from sleep, he rushed out to fight, but desperately and without any definite purpose, his desire being, as he tells us more than once, to be killed. Making his way to Priam's palace, he climbed on to the roof and assisted in its defence, and he remained there while the palace was entered by the Greeks and Priam murdered before his eyes. When he was going to kill Helen or to do some wild deed, perhaps to kill himself, he was stopped by his mother Venus and urged to look after his family, now in great danger from the enemy. Finally, he gave up all for lost and went out of the city, taking with him Anchises, his father, by whose authority he was accustomed to act, and his son Iulus, who was his heir, but leaving his wife to follow him at a distance through the darkness and, as the event proved, to disappear. Next summer he sailed to Thrace and began to build a town on the coast, but left it as soon as he learnt, no doubt by a terrible warning, that Polydorus had been murdered there. After seeking his new home hither and thither over the sea in obedience to prophecies and oracles, or to his father's interpretation of them, he is caught in a violent storm off the north coast of Africa. He does nothing to help or to encourage his men, but trembles and

wails, though it is true that when he has landed, he professes to be sanguine and resolute. On all this Aeneas himself supplies the fair comment, when he meets Venus in the guise of a huntress and does not tell her in answer to her questions that he is a warrior renowned in war, but says, 'I am the good Aeneas, who carry in my fleet the Penates saved from the enemy...; I seek Italy my country.' Aeneas is under the guidance of fate, and our interest in him does not primarily depend on the splendour of his deeds or on any personal qualities, but on his success or failure in going forward to the appointed end. He is to found a city for his gods, whence Rome is to spring and 'rule the peoples of the world with her sway', and in Roman eyes, at least, it must count as a merit if he sacrifices his individual greatness and abandons himself to the direction of heaven even at the cost of his glory and good name. Fata viam invenient, says the prophet Helenus to him. 'Fate', not your valour and endurance, 'will find a way.'

Never is it more necessary to understand that Aeneas is not an initiator but an instrument than when we read the fourth book, in which Virgil was specially free to develop his story as he liked. If a poet found himself compelled to represent his hero as betraying and deserting the woman who loved and trusted him, it might be expected that he would suggest any possible palliation of his conduct, showing that he had been intentionally deceived or hurried ignorantly into some false position, and that his victim in reality had brought

Her

her fate upon herself and deserved little sympathy from the reader. Virgil, however, has not done this. Dido, in his story, is a brave and energetic woman, who after the murder of her husband led a number of her Tyrians to found a new town in a distant land. When the shipwrecked Trojans sought her protection, she received them with kindness and hospitality, saying that she herself knew what it was to be an exile from home. loyalty to her dead husband had prevented her from accepting any offers of marriage from native princes, and her love for him, as we afterwards hear, stronger than death, endured to be her comfort and support in the world below. When for a time she was mastered by a passion for Aeneas, it was because two goddesses, usually opposed to each other, combined their powers against her; and her despair and death were the necessary consequences of her passion. Aeneas, on the other hand, fails even in that constancy to his task which is the most marked feature of his character. He remains at Carthage, not because he has definitely abandoned his quest, but because he yields weakly to pleasure and allows things to drift. When he receives Jupiter's order to go away, his one idea is to make his preparations in secret, see as little of Dido as possible, and avoid a scene. In answer to her reproaches for his infidelity he coldly replies that he shall always remember her with pleasure and gratitude, and insults her by asserting that he never regarded the union as permanent. It is impossible to excuse his conduct on the ground that he is now acting