changeable, forsooth! The desertion is in obedience to the will of the gods, no doubt. That explanation satisfied the critics of Augustus’s day, and he was to them, as Virgil calls him, the “pious” Æneas. To the modern reader, such an authorisation only makes the treachery more disgusting. The morality of English romance, ancient or modern, is by no means immaculate. Tristram and Iseult, still more Lancelot and Guinevere, are of very frail clay. The Sir Galahads ride alone; then, now, and always, in fiction as in fact. But a hero who could be false to a woman, and who was to find in that falsehood the turning-point to fame and success,--he might befit the loose tale with which the _rybauder_ raised a laugh round the camp-fire, but he was the subject of no lay to which noble knight or dame would listen. The passion might be only _pars amours_, but it must be loyal. To keep such faith, once pledged, the hero might break all other laws, divine or human; but keep it he must. “_Loyaulté passe tout, et faulsseté honnet tout._” The principle is by no means the highest, but it is incomparably higher than Virgil’s. And this makes Lancelot, in spite of his great crime, a hero in one sense, even to the purest mind, while the calculating piety of Æneas is revolting. The apologetic criticisms of some translators, who have felt themselves bound not only to give a faithful version of their author, but to defend his conception of a hero, are highly entertaining. Dryden, who was said by one of his malicious critics to have written “for the court ladies,” admits candidly that he knows they “will make a numerous party against him,” and that he “cannot much blame them, for, to say the truth, it is an ill precedent for their gallants to follow;” winding up with a satirical suggestion that they would do well at least “to learn experience at her cost.” But in spite of this special pleading, even Dryden cannot conceal from himself that his hero makes but a very poor figure in this part of the story; nor can he resist the humorous remark that he was more afraid of Dido, after all, than of Jupiter. “For you may observe,” says he, “that as much intent as he was upon his voyage, yet he still delayed it until the messenger was obliged to tell him plainly, that if he weighed not anchor in the night, the queen would be with him in the morning.” Delille says that Æneas “triumphed over his passions in order to obey the will of heaven;” and forgets to add, that the triumph would have been more complete and more creditable if it had been achieved somewhat earlier in the story. He notices the unfortunate fate of poor Creusa,--left to follow as she might, and never missed till the more fortunate survivors met at the rendezvous,--only to say how necessary it was for the purposes of the story to dispose of her somehow, if there was a new wife awaiting Æneas in Italy; and how the account (his own account) of his affectionate search for her (with the