}
{ At this, a flood, of tears Lavinia shed;
{ A crimson blush her beauteous face o'erspread, P. [146.]
{ Varying her cheeks by turns with white and red.
Amata, ever partial to the cause of Turnus, had just before desired him, with all manner of earnestness, not to engage his rival in single fight; which was his present resolution. Virgil, though (in favour of his hero) he never tells us directly that Lavinia preferred Turnus to Æneas, yet has insinuated this preference twice before. For mark, in the seventh Æneïd, she left her father, (who had promised her to Æneas without asking her consent,) and followed her mother into the woods, with a troop of Bacchanals, where Amata sung the marriage-song, in the name of Turnus; which, if she had disliked, she might have opposed. Then, in the eleventh Æneïd, when her mother went to the temple of Pallas, to invoke her aid against Æneas, whom she calls by no better name than Phrygius prædo, Lavinia sits by her in the same chair or litter, juxtaque comes Lavinia virgo,—oculos dejecta decoros. What greater sign of love, than fear and concernment for the lover? In the lines which I have quoted, she not only sheds tears, but changes colour. She had been bred up with Turnus; and Æneas was wholly a stranger to her. Turnus, in probability, was her first love, and favoured by her mother, who had the ascendant over her father. But I am much deceived, if (besides what I have said) there be not a secret satire against the sex, which is lurking under this description of Virgil, who seldom speaks well of women—better indeed of Camilla, than any other—for he commends her beauty and valour—because he would concern the reader for her death. But valour is no very proper praise for woman-kind; and beauty is common to the sex. He says also somewhat of Andromache, but transiently: and his Venus is a better mother than a wife; for she owns to Vulcan she had a son by another man. The rest are Junos, Dianas, Didos, Amatas, two mad prophetesses, three Harpies on earth, and as many Furies under ground. This fable of Lavinia includes a secret moral; that women, in their choice of husbands, prefer the younger of their suitors to the elder; are insensible of merit, fond of handsomeness, and, generally speaking, rather hurried away by their appetite, than governed by their reason.
Note II.
Sea-born Messapus, with Atinas, heads
The Latin squadrons, and to battle leads.—P. [166.]
The poet had said, in the preceding lines, that Mnestheus, Serestus, and Asylas, led on the Trojans, the Tuscans, and the Arcadians: but none of the printed copies, which I have seen, mention any leader of the Rutulians and Latins, but Messapus the son of Neptune. Ruæus takes notice of this passage, and seems to wonder at it; but gives no reason, why Messapus is alone without a coadjutor.