BULLER.
And take up his Georgics.
TALBOYS.
To love Virgil we need not forget Homer—but to sympathise with Æneas, our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.
SEWARD
Troy is dust—the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and their Leader.
TALBOYS.
Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat—under One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil so sustained the character of that Man—of that Hero? Or has he, from ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject—let him sink below our nobler sympathies—nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?
SEWARD.
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.