either find or make some oppportunity of breaking the news of his departure to Dido.
This is the turning-point of the poem; and here it is that the interest to a modern reader, so far as the mere plot of the story is concerned, is sadly marred by the way in which the hero thus cuts himself off from all our sympathies. His most ingenious apologists—and he has found many—appeal to us in vain. Upon the audience or the readers of his own time, no doubt, the effect might have been different. To the critics of Augustus's court, love—or what they understood by it—was a mere weakness in the hero. The call which Heaven had conveyed to him was to found the great empire of the future; and because he obeys the call at the expense of his tenderest feelings, the poet gives him always his distinctive epithet—the "pious" Æneas. The word "pious," it must be remembered, implies in the Latin the recognition of all duties to one's country and one's parents, as well as to the gods. And in all these senses Æneas would deserve it. But to an English mind, the "piety" which pleads the will of Heaven as an excuse for treachery to a woman, only adds a deeper hue of infamy to the transaction. It
"Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse."
But our story must not wait for us to discuss too curiously the morals of the hero. Æneas has thought to make his preparations without the knowledge of the queen—while she
"Still dreams her happy dream, nor thinks
That ought can break those golden links."
