Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

Would Sir Walter's Poetry stand such critical examination?

NORTH

All – or nearly so – directly dealing with War – Fighting in all its branches. Indeed, with any kind of Action he seldom fails – in Reflection, often – and, strange to say, almost as often in description of Nature, though there in his happier hours he excels.

SEWARD

I was always expecting, during that discussion about the Clitumnus, that you would have brought in Virgil.

NORTH

Ay, Maro – in description – is superior to them all – in the Æneid as well as in the Georgics. But we have no time to speak of his Pictures now – only just let me ask you – Do you remember what Payne Knight says of Æneas?

SEWARD

No, for I never read it.

NORTH

Payne Knight, in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste– a work of high authority in his own day, and containing many truths vigorously expounded, though characterised throughout by arrogance and presumption – speaks of that "selfish coldness with which the Æneas of Virgil treats the unfortunate princess, whose affections he had seduced," and adds, that "Every modern reader of the Æneid finds that the Episode of Dido, though in itself the most exquisite piece of composition existing, weakens extremely the subsequent interest of the Poem, it being impossible to sympathise either cordially or kindly with the fortunes or exertions of a hero who sneaks away from his high-minded and much-injured benefactress in a manner so base and unmanly. When, too, we find him soon after imitating all the atrocities, and surpassing the utmost arrogance, of the furious and vindictive Achilles, without displaying any of his generosity, pride, or energy, he becomes at once mean and odious, and only excites scorn and indignation; especially when, at the conclusion, he presents to Lavinia a hand stained with the blood of her favoured lover, whom he had stabbed while begging for quarter, and after being rendered incapable of resistance." Is not this, Seward, much too strong?

SEWARD

I think, sir, it is not only much too strong, but outrageous; and that we are bound, in justice to Virgil, to have clearly before our mind his own Idea of his Hero.

TALBOYS

To try that Æneas by the rules of poetry and of morality; and if we find his character such as neither our imagination nor our moral sense will suffer us to regard with favour – to admire either in Hero or Man – then to throw the Æneid aside.

BULLER

And take up his Georgics.

TALBOYS

To love Virgil we need not forget Homer – but to sympathise with Æneas, our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.

SEWARD

Troy is dust – the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and their Leader.

TALBOYS

Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat – under One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil so sustained the character of that Man – of that Hero? Or has he, from ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject – let him sink below our nobler sympathies – nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?

SEWARD

For seven years he has been that Man – that Hero. One Night's Tale has shown him – as he is – for I presume that Virgil – and not Payne Knight – was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie – and the Son of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a coward – shut the Book or burn it.

TALBOYS

Much gossip – of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea – has been scribbled by divers male pens – stupid or spritely – on that magnificent Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during the Town Sack – and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say they, does not speak of his piety – he takes care of his household gods without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics – some not without name – have been such – unrepentant – old women. Come we to Dido.

NORTH

Be cautious – for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for his part in that transaction.

TALBOYS

I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a Tyrian Queen – say at once a Man and a Woman – on sudden temptation and unforeseen opportunity – Sin – and they continue to sin. As pious men as Æneas – and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far worse than that – yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship of saints, kings, or heroes.

SEWARD

To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses the word, is a calumnious vulgarism.

TALBOYS

And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes – and keep them shut.

SEWARD

Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked at his Little-go. But I forget – there was no plucking in those days – and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man.

NORTH

Nevertheless he was a Scholar.

SEWARD

Not nevertheless, sir – notwithstanding, sir.

NORTH

I sit corrected.

SEWARD

Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him – desperately in love as she was – 'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal cave.

TALBOYS

Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last!

SEWARD

Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona she – no "gentle Lady" – nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those remonstrances – and that raving – and that suicide!

TALBOYS