Æneid

“ Here is unity of action, no doubt, a beginning, a middle, and an end: it must however be acknowledged, that the Æneid is more happy in point of connection. The mind hath a propensity to go forward in the chain of history: it keeps always in view the expected event; and when the incidents or under-parts are connected together by their relation to the event, the mind runs sweetly and easily along them. ”

“ So stands Æneas 'neath the blast
Of wintry war, till all be past,
And chiding, threatening, seeks to stay
Young Lausus from his bold essay:
'Fond youth! why rush so fast on fate,
And spend your strength on task too great?
Love blinds you to impending ill'—
In vain; the fond youth rages still. ”

“ That he is, on the one hand, the passive receptacle of Divine guidance, and, on the other, the impersonation of a modern ideal of humanity, playing a part in a rude and turbulent time, are the two main causes of the tame and colourless character of the protagonist of the Aeneid. ”

“ Being or Beings, like to man in feelings and moral attributes, but infinitely greater in power and knowledge, exists in the Aeneid side by side with the doctrine of the omnipotence of Fate, crushing, if necessary, human wishes and human happiness under its iron determinations. But in the final award of happiness or misery after death, revealed in the sixth book, the agency of Fate gives place to that of a moral dispensation awarding to men their portions according to their actions. ”

“ Pert or lively dunces, who are not real dull, will come in of due course. And from that first foundation the poet may lawfully go on to bring in perverted intelligence and moral vitiation of the soul. Reclining on our swing-chair—and waiting for the devil—with the Æneid in the one hand and the Dunciad in the other, we have this moment made a remarkable discovery in ancient and in modern classic poetry. ”

“ It is a trite observation, that the curious seldom hear any good of themselves; and all epic poets, who have sent their heroes to conjurors, have, with excellent morality, taught us, that they who pry into futurity, too often anticipate affliction.—VIRGIL plainly intimates this lesson in the caution which he puts into the mouth of ANCHISES, when ÆNEAS enquires into the future destiny of the younger MARCELLUS, whose premature death forms the pathetic subject of the concluding vision in the sixth book of the ÆNEID:
“O nate, ingentum lectum ne quære tuorum.” ”

“ Æneid—opened the volume ad aperturam libri, anywhere, at random, when the first passage that accidentally struck the eye was carefully read and pondered with as little reference as possible to its immediate context, and a meaning extracted from it which was supposed to indicate the issue of the event in hand, and which was to be considered inevitable and irrevocable as the fates had so decreed. A man with the knowledge thus obtained could not by any precaution or change of conduct avert the impending doom, good or evil ”

“ It actually brings Æneas at one point of his wanderings within three months’ time of an incident in the Odyssey: it shows us Andromache still mourning for Hector, and the gods still at enmity over the old feud between Greek and Trojan. But all these links 274with the earlier epics, and many others, subtler or more obvious, are merely formal. In spirit there is as wide a severance as we know to exist in actual time. The Æneid, with its humane, philosophic and cultured poet, belongs to a state of society many hundreds of years later than the Iliad and Odyssey. ”

“ The success of his Vida animated him to a higher undertaking; and in his thirtieth year he published a version of the first book of the Æneid. This being, I suppose, commended by his friends, he, some time afterwards, added three or four more; with an advertisement, in which he represents himself as translating with great indifference, and with a progress of which himself was hardly conscious. This can hardly be true, and, if true, is nothing to the reader.
At last, without any farther contention with his modesty or any awe of the name of Dryden, he gave us a complete English Æneid, which I am sorry not to see, joined in this publication with his other poems ”

“ Then sought the queen: she took him to her arms
With greedy pleasure, and devour’d his charms.
Unhappy Dido little thought what guest,
How dire a god, she drew so near her breast;
But he, not mindless of his mother’s pray’r,
Works in the pliant bosom of the fair,
And moulds her heart anew, and blots her former care.
The dead is to the living love resign’d;
And all Aeneas enters in her mind.
Now, when the rage of hunger was appeas’d,
The meat remov’d, and ev’ry guest was pleas’d,
The golden bowls with sparkling wine are crown’d,
And thro’ the palace cheerful cries resound. ”

“ They wind the hill, and thro' the blissful meadows go.
But old Anchises, in a flow'ry vale,
Review'd his muster'd race, and took the tale:
Those happy spirits, which, ordain'd by fate,
For future beings and new bodies wait-
With studious thought observ'd th' illustrious throng,
In nature's order as they pass'd along:
Their names, their fates, their conduct, and their care,
In peaceful senates and successful war.
He, when Aeneas on the plain appears,
Meets him with open arms, and falling tears.
"Welcome," he said, "the gods' undoubted race! ”

“ In a long narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterise the Georgics—in which poem the position and weight of each single word in each single line is an element contributing to the whole effect—is hardly to be expected. A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even careless movement than one of which the interest is contemplative, and which requires to be studied minutely line by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning is realised. ”

“ Yet, if desire of fame, and thirst of pow'r,
A beauteous princess, with a crown in dow'r,
So fire your mind, in arms assert your right,
And meet your foe, who dares you to the fight.
Mankind, it seems, is made for you alone ”

“ A fiery strength inspires their lives,
An essence that from heaven derives,
Though clogged in part by limbs of clay,
And the dull 'vesture of decay.'
Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
And human laughter, human tears:
Immured in dungeon-seeming night,
They look abroad, yet see no light. ”

“ Her Lycian quiver, and her pastoral spear 973 Of myrtle, tipt with steel, and her, the maid, how fair! BOOK EIGHT ARGUMENT
Mustering of Italians, and embassage to Diomedes (1-18) . Tiber in a dream heartens Æneas and directs him to Evander for succour. Æneas sacrifices the white sow and her litter to Juno, and reaches Evander's city Pallanteum—the site of Rome (19-117) . Æneas and Evander meet and feast together. The story of Cacus and the praises of Hercules are told and sung. Evander shows his city to Æneas (118-432) . Venus asks and obtains from Vulcan divine armour for her son (433-531) . ”

“ The story of the life and adventures of Æneas, which we have given in this and in the preceding chapters, is a faithful summary of the narrative which the poetic historians of those days recorded. It is, of course, not to be relied upon as a narrative of facts ”

“ But I can learn so little about it all, that I cannot, from my own judgment, determine which must be right.'
'Perhaps,' thoughtfully responded Ænone, 'it may be that if you tell me all you know about it, I may be able to assist your conclusions. Who knows what light I myself need, or how much of good we may borrow from this new religion? It cannot be wrong to examine for one's self, and the gods will not be angry if we gain good doctrine even from wrong sources, so long as it may make us better. ”

“ And when he would know the meaning of the concourse, Anchises said: “These are souls which have yet to live again in a mortal body, and they are constrained to drink of the water of forgetfulness.” And Æneas said: “Nay, my father, can any desire to take again upon them the body of death?” Then Anchises made reply: “Listen, my son, and I will tell thee all. There is one soul in heaven and earth and the stars and the shining orb of the moon and the great sun himself; from which soul also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of the air, and of the fishes of the sea. ”

“ He is the chosen instrument of a Divine purpose working out its ends alike across his own buffetings from shore to shore or the love-tortures of the Phœnician Queen. The memorable words that Æneas addresses to Dares, "Cede Deo," "bend before a will higher as well as stronger than thine own," are in fact the faith of his own career. ”

“ Hither, friends, and bear aid to me that am alone, and sorely do I dread the oncoming of Aeneas, swift of foot, that cometh against me; right strong is he to slay men in battle, and he hath the flower of youth, wherein is the fulness of strength. ”

“ It is the harsh warning of fate that they must not settle here. But where? To Æneas, as he tosses in sleepless anxiety through the night, there appear in the white moonlight the images of his country's gods, who give him the needed counsel:
We, the followers of you and your fortune since the Dardan land sank in flame—we, the comrades of the fleet which you have been guiding over the swollen main—we it is that will raise to the stars the posterity that shall come after you, and crown your city with imperial sway. ”

“ No cause is assigned, that can make it appear necessary or even natural, to suspend, for so long a time, the principal action in its most interesting period. To engage Æneas to wander from his course in search of an adventure so extraordinary, the poet can find no better pretext, than the hero’s longing to visit the ghost of his father recently dead. ”

“ Now Naid is interpreted commotion, and Eden delight; and Faith, and Knowledge, and Peace are delight, from which he that has disobeyed is cast out. But he that is wise in his own eyes will not so much as listen to the beginning of the divine commandments; but, as if his own teacher, throwing off the reins, plunges voluntarily into a billowy commotion, sinking down to mortal and created things from the uncreated knowledge, holding various opinions at various times. “Those who have no guidance fall like leaves.” ”

“ This centre I gathered to be, from what you told me in Rome (and one gathers it also from the title,) the consciousness of Eleanor—to which all the rest (Manisty, Lucy, the whole phantasmagoria and drama) is presented by life. I should have urged you: "Make that consciousness full, rich, universally prehensile and stick to it—don't shift—and don't shift arbitrarily—how, otherwise, do you get your unity of subject or keep up your reader's sense of it?" ”

“ He stood and gazed, then, with his arms folded on his chest, while the people walking to and fro passed and repassed him, and many a one commented as they went, and assigned him a history and a character from their own imagination. How seldom is it, in the busy world with which we mingle, that any of the conjectures regarding our thoughts, our feelings, our state of existence, are correct! ”

“ She is girded with a quiver, and is clothed with the skin of a spotted lynx, or, may be, she hunts a wild boar with horn and hound.”
To whom Æneas, “I have not seen nor heard sister of thine, O virgin—for what shall I call thee? for, of a surety, neither is thy look as of a mortal woman, nor yet thy voice. A goddess certainly thou art, sister of Phœbus, or, haply, one of the nymphs. But whosoever thou art, look favorably upon us and help us. Tell us in what land we be, for the winds have driven us hither, and we know not aught of place or people.” ”

“ The gods in past times have been reported as possessing some unworthy children, but no one could deem this man unworthy to have had gods for his ancestors. Æneas himself became king, as likewise some of his descendants. ”

“ That gleam of malicious triumph which had so brightened up the face of the slave, had come and gone like the lightning flash, and, for the moment, Ænone was almost inclined to believe that it was some bewildering waking dream. But her instinct told her that it was no mere imagination or fancy which could thus, at one instant, fill the heart with dread and change her bright anticipations of coming joy into a dull, aching foreboding of misery. ”

“ By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith. ”

“ Try us with sacrifices. I could throw away every earthly good to bestow on you a year of happiness—only not my philosophic proposition, as you sarcastically call it. That is greater than I and greater than you—pray heaven it do not clash with the promise of our peace. Virgil, I think, meant to exhibit such a tragic conflict in his tale of Æneas and Dido, only poetwise the inner impulse which worked within Æneas he expressed dramatically as a messenger from the gods. It shows but little understanding of the poem or of human nature to censure Æneas as a cold egotist. ”

“ Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man.
And you were often there about the Queen,
But saw me not, or mark'd not if you saw;
Nor did I care or dare to speak with you,
But kept myself aloof till I was changed;
And fear not, cousin; I am changed indeed."
He spoke, and Enid easily believed,
Like simple noble natures, credulous
Of what they long for, good in friend or foe,
There most in those who most have done them ill. ”

“ The ‘mother of the Aeneadae’ combines a subtlety of device and persistence of purpose with the charm which befits the ancestress of a family in which personal beauty, as is attested by many extant statues, was as conspicuous as force of intellect and of character. ”