My fatal course is finished; and I go,
A glorious name, among the ghosts below.
A lofty city by my hands is raised;
Pygmalion punished, and my lord appeased.
What could my fortune have afforded more,
Had the false Trojan never touched my shore?"
Then kissed the couch; and " Must I die," she said,
"And unrevenged? 'tis doubly to be dead!
Yet even this death with pleasure I receive:
On any terms, 'tis better than to live.
These flames, from far, may the false Trojan view;
These boding omens his base flight pursue!"
She said, and struck; deep entered in her side
The piercing steel, with reeking purple dyed:
Clogged in the wound the cruel weapon stands;
The spouting blood came streaming on her hands.
Her sad attendants saw the deadly stroke,
And with loud cries the sounding palace shook.
Distracted, from the fatal sight they fled,
And through the town the dismal rumour spread.
First, from the frighted court the yell began;
Redoubled, thence from house to house it ran:
The groans of men, with shrieks, laments, and cries
Of mixing women, mount the vaulted skies.
Not less the clamour, than if ancient Tyre,
Or the new Carthage, set by foes on fire-
The rolling ruin, with their loved abodes,
Involved the blazing temples of their gods.
Her sister hears; and, furious with despair,
She beats her breast, and rends her yellow hair,
And, calling on Eliza's name aloud,
Runs breathless to the place, and breaks the crowd.
"Was all that pomp of woe for this prepared,
These fires, this funeral pile, these altars reared?
Was all this train of plots contrived, (said she,)
All only to deceive unhappy me?
Which is the worst? Didst thou in death pretend
To scorn thy sister, or delude thy friend?
Thy summoned sister, and thy friend, had come;
One sword had served us both, one common tomb:
Was I to raise the pile, the powers invoke,
Not to be present at the fatal stroke?
At once thou hast destroyed thyself and me,
Thy town, thy senate, and thy colony!
Bring water! bathe the wound; while I in death
Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath.'
This said, she mounts the pile with eager haste,
And in her arms the gasping queen embraced;
Her temples chafed; and her own garments tore,
To staunch the streaming blood, and cleanse the gore.
Thrice Dido tried to raise her drooping head,
And, fainting, thrice fell grovelling on the bed;
Thrice oped her heavy eyes, and saw the light,
But, having found it, sickened at the sight,
And closed her lids at last in endless night.
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so lingering, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of labouring nature, and dissolve her life.
For, since she died, not doomed by heaven's decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plunged her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.-
Downward the various Goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colours from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover's head,
And said, "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This offering to the infernal gods I bear."
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loosed, and life dissolved in
-And "must I die," she said,
"And unrevenged? 'tis doubly to be dead!
Yet even this death with pleasure I receive ;
On any terms, 'tis better than to live."---P. 351.
This is certainly the sense of Virgil, on which I have paraphrased, to make it plain. His words are these:
Sed moriamur, ait; sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras,
Servius makes an interrogation at the word sic; thus, sic? Sic juvat ire sub umbras; which Mr Cowley justly censures: but his own judgment may perhaps be questioned; for he would retrench the latter part of the verse, and leave it a hemistick,---Sed moriamur, ait. That Virgil never intended to have left any hemistick, I have proved already in the preface. That this verse was filled up by him with these words, sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras, is very probable, if we consider the weight of them; for this procedure of Dido does not only contain that dira execratio, quæ nullo expiatur carmine,* (as Horace observes in his "Canidia,") but, besides that,
Virgil, who is full of allusions to history, under another name describes the Decii devoting themselves to death this way, though in a better cause, in order to the destruction of the enemy. The reader, who will take the pains to consult Livy in his accurate description of those Decii thus devoting themselves, will find a great resemblance betwixt these two passages. And it is judiciously ob served upon that verse,
Nulla fides populis nec fœdera sunto,
that Virgil uses, in the word sunto, a verbum juris, a form of speaking on solemn and religious occasions. Livy does the like. Note also, that Dido puts herself into the habitus Gabinus, which was the girding herself round with one sleeve of her vest; which is also according to the Roman pontifical, in this dreadful ceremony, as Livy has observed; which is a farther confirmation of this conjecture. So that, upon the whole matter, Dido only doubts whether she should die before she had taken her revenge, which she rather wished; but, considering that this devoting herself was the most certain and infallible way of compassing her vengeance, she thus exclaims:
-Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras!
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et nostræ secum ferat omina mortis?
Those flames from far may the false Trojan view;
Those boding omens his base flight pursue!
which translation I take to be according to the sense of Virgil. I should have added a note on that former verse,
Infelix Dido! nunc te fata impia tangunt—
which, in the edition of Heinsius, is thus printed, nunc te facta impia tangunt? The word facta, instead of fata, is reasonably altered; for Virgil says afterwards, she died not by fate, nor by any deserved death, nec fato, meritá nec morte, peribat, &c. When I translated that passage, I doubted of the sense, and therefore omitted that hemistick, nunc te fata impia tangunt. But Heinsius is mistaken only in making an interrogation-point instead of a period. The words facta impia, I suppose, are genuine; for she had perjured herself in her second marriage, having firmly resolved, as she told her sister in the beginning of this Æneid, never to love again, after the death of her first husband; and had confirmed this resolution by a curse on herself, if she should alter it:
Sed mihi vel tellus, optem, prius ima dehisca*, &c.
Ante, pudor, quam te violem, aut tua jura resolvam.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit: ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.
Eneas, setting sail from Afric, is driven by a storm on the coast of
Sicily, where he is hospitably received by his friend Acestes, king of
part of the island, and born of Trojan parentage. He applies him-
self to celebrate the memory of his father with divine honours, and
accordingly institutes funeral games, and appoints prizes for those
who should conquer in them. While the ceremonies were perform-
ing, Juno sends Iris to persuade the Trojan women to burn the ships,
who, upon
her instigation, set fire to them; which burned four, and
would have consumed the rest, had not Jupiter, by a miraculous
shower, extinguished it. Upon this, Eneas, by the advice of one of
his generals, and a vision of his father, builds a city for the women,
old men, and others, who were either unfit for war, or weary of the
voyage, and sails for Italy. Venus procures of Neptune a safe voyage
for him and all his men, excepting only his pilot Palinurus, who was
unfortunately lost. *
MEANTIME the Trojan cuts his watery way,
Fixed on his voyage, through the curling sea;
Then, casting back his eyes, with dire amaze,
Sees on the Punic shore the mounting blaze.
great part of this book is borrowed from Apollonius Rhodius; and the reader may observe the great judgment and distinc
|