For seven years he has been that Man--that Hero. One Night's Tale has shown him--as he is--for I presume that Virgil--and not Payne Knight--was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie--and the Son of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a coward--shut the Book or burn it. TALBOYS. Much gossip--of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea--has been scribbled by divers male pens--stupid or spritely--on that magnificent Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during the Town Sack--and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say they, does not speak of his piety--he takes care of his household gods without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics--some not without name--have been such--unrepentant--old women. Come we to Dido. NORTH. Be cautious--for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for his part in that transaction. TALBOYS. I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a Tyrian Queen--say at once a Man and a Woman--on sudden temptation and unforeseen opportunity--SIN--and they continue to sin. As pious men as Æneas--and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far worse than that--yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship of saints, kings, or heroes. SEWARD. To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses the word, is a calumnious vulgarism. TALBOYS. And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes--and keep them shut. SEWARD. Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked at his Little-go. But I forget--there was no plucking in those days--and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man. NORTH. Nevertheless he was a Scholar. SEWARD. Not nevertheless, sir--notwithstanding, sir. NORTH. I sit corrected. SEWARD. Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him--desperately in love as she was--'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal cave. TALBOYS. Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last! SEWARD. Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona she--no "gentle Lady"--nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those remonstrances--and that raving--and that suicide! TALBOYS. 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.