eadied by a high sense of man's worth and
work in the world, braced to patience and endurance for noble ends,
passion--the revolt of the individual self against the world's
order--seemed a light and trivial thing. He could feel and paint with
exquisite delicacy and fire the charm of woman's utter love; but woman
with all her loveliness wanted to him the grandeur of man's higher
constancy to an unselfish purpose, "varium et mutabile semper foemina."
Passion on the other hand is the mainspring of modern poetry, and it is
difficult for us to realize the superior beauty of the calmer and vaster
ideal of the poets of old. The figure of Dido, whirled hither and
thither by the storms of warring emotions, reft even of her queenly
dignity by the despair of her love, degraded by jealousy and
disappointment to a very scold, is to the calm, serene figure of AEneas
as modern sculpture, the sculpture of emotion, is to the sculpture of
classic art. Each, no doubt, has its own peculiar beauty, and the work
of a true criticism is to view either from its own standpoint and not
from the standpoint of its rival. But if we would enter into the mind of
Vergil we must view Dido with the eyes of AEneas and not AEneas with the
eyes of Dido.

When Vergil first sets the two figures before us, it is not on the
contrast but on the unity of their temper and history that he dwells.
Touch after touch brings out this oneness of mood and aim as they drift
towards one another. The same weariness, the same unconscious longing
for rest and love, fills either heart. It is as a queen, as a Dian
over-topping her nymphs by the head, that Dido appears on the scene,
distributing their task to her labourers as a Roman Cornelia distributed
wool to her house-slaves, questioning the Trojan strangers who sought
her hospitality and protection. It is with the brief, haughty tone of a
ruler of men that she bids them lay by their fears and assures them of
shelter. Around her is the hum and stir of the city-building, a scene in
which the sharp, precise touches of Vergil betray the hand of the
town-poet. But within is the lonely heart of a woman. Dido, like AEneas,
is a fugitive, an exile of bitter, vain regrets. Her husband, "loved
with a mighty love," has fallen by a brother's hand; and his ghost, like
that of Creusa, has driven her in flight from her Tyrian fatherland.
Like AEneas too she is no solitary wanderer; she guides a new colony to
the site of the future Carthag