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

Ay, Dan Virgil feared not to put the condemnation of his Hero into those lips of fire – to let her winged curses pursue the Pious Perfidious as he puts to sea. But what is truth – passion – nature from the reproachful and raving – the tender and the truculent – the repentant and the revengeful – the true and the false Dido – for she had forgot and she remembers Sychæus – when cut up into bits of bad law, and framed into an Indictment through which the Junior Jehu at the Scottish Bar might drive a Coach and Six!

SEWARD

But he forsook her! He did – and in obedience to the will of heaven. Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound – he is not sailing under scaled orders – Dido hears the Hero's destiny from the lips of Mœstissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade. But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations – none so deaf as those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her Royal Couch fired her vital blood – and she already is so insane as to dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot – and he remembers his duty – yes – his duty; according to the Creed of his country – of the whole heathen world – in deserting Dido, he obeyed the Gods.

TALBOYS

He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must – would it have been more heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination?

SEWARD

Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage?

BULLER

Would they have been a happy Couple?

SEWARD

Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome?

TALBOYS

Do we – because of Dido – despise him when first he kens, on a calm bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of the Tiber?

"Æneas, primique duces, et pulcher Iulus,
Corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altæ,
Instituuntque dapes."

SEWARD

But he was a robber – a pirate – an invader – an usurper – so say the Payne Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace – and a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King.

TALBOYS

Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas – the reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage – and here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man. Lavinia belonged to Æneas – not to Turnus – though we must not severely blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata, in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment – if betrothed they were – was unhallowed – and might not bind in face of Fate.

BULLER

Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has made him a hero – and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas – the same idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint a hero at all.

TALBOYS

That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the Rising – the Gathering – in the Seventh Æneid?

NORTH

Sir Walter himself had much of it by heart – and I have seen the "repeated air" kindle the aspect, and uplift the Lion-Port of the greatest War-Poet that ever blew the trumpet.

SEWARD

Æneas at the Court of Evander – that fine old Grecian! There he is a Hero to be loved – and Pallas loved him – and he loved Pallas – and all men with hearts love Virgil for their sakes.

TALBOYS

And is he not a Hero, when relanding from sea at the mouth of his own Tiber, with his Etrurian Allies – some thousands strong? And does he not then act the Hero? Virgil was no War-Poet! Second only to Homer, I hold —

SEWARD

An imitator of Homer! With fights of the Homeric age – how could he help it? But he is, in much, original on the battle-field – and is there in all the Iliad a Lausus, or a Pallas? —

BULLER

Or a Camilla?

SEWARD

Fighting is at the best a sad business – but Payne Knight is offensive on the cruelty – the ferocity of Æneas. I wish Virgil had not made him seize and sacrifice the Eight Young Men to appease the Manes of Pallas. Such sacrifice Virgil believed to be agreeable to the manners of the time – and, if usual to the most worthy, here assuredly due. In the final Great Battle,

"Away to heaven, respective Lenity,
And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now."

BULLER

Knight is a ninny on the Single Combat. In all the previous circumstances regarding it, Turnus behaved ill – now that he must fight, he fights well: 'tis as fair a fight as ever was fought in the field of old Epic Poetry: tutelary interposition alternates in favour of either Prince: the bare notion of either outliving defeat never entered any mind but Payne Knight's: nor did any other fingers ever fumble such a charge against the hero of an Epic as "Stabbing while begging for quarter" – but a momentary weakness in Turnus which was not without its effect on Æneas, till at sight of that Belt, he sheathed the steel.

TALBOYS

Payne works himself up, in the conclusion of the passage, into an absolute maniac.

NORTH

Good manners, Talboys – no insult – remember Mr Knight has been long dead.

TALBOYS

So has Æneas – so has Virgil.

NORTH

True. Young gentlemen, I have listened with much pleasure to your animated and judicious dialogue. Shall I now give Judgment?

BULLER

Lengthy?

NORTH

Not more than an hour.