Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/452

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. DEC. 3, '98.

The Inn referred to by Stow was rebuilt about 1640 by Inigo Jones, except apparently the hall, a building 40 ft. by 26 ft, which remained until the last rebuilding, but does not appear to have possessed any special architectural feature except its timber roof. The Inn formerly had two courts, the inner or northern one extending a great part of the depth of Brook Street, but with chambers on one side only. Herbert, writing in 1804, notices the front wall as an admirable piece of brickwork, but says that the Inn was the dirtiest and most desolate of all the Inns. It appears to have been then condemned for rebuilding, but was not rebuilt until 1818-20 by Peto. It was sold about 1853 for 55,000^. It has now been purchased by the Prudential Assurance Company, who have also acquired some of the adjacent property. It may be added that the arms are described as, Argent, a bend between six martlets gules, within a border of the second. Furnival's Inn is no longer visible to the man in the street, but a building that has had such names as Talbot, More, and Dickens connected with its history will never cease to have interest for the his- torian, the biographer, and the antiquary.

B. H. L.

THE REAL AENEAS.

THE pages of Homer and of Virgil too, for that matter are sometimes damaging to certain usurped reputations. To judge from these authors, our old friend ^Eneas the pious ./Eneas would seem to have been a somewhat overrated character at the least, if not a dis- tinctly " shady " one. He may have been " pious "; but his conduct seems to have been on sundry occasions very doubtful, to say the least of it. That perpetually paraded " piety " of his is a bad sign.

Let us see what Homer has to say of this sanctimonious gentleman. Without any de- clared intention of running him down, or holding him up to reprobation, old Mseonides nevertheless rarely represents him in a credit- able light. In ' Iliad,' v. 224, he is found coolly proposing to Pandarus that they should pre- pare to run away, saying of his steeds that they are well fitted to bear him and his com- rade safe out of the fight :

TU> KO.I v(o'i TroAtvSe craiocrcTov.

And this without striking a blow.

In 'Iliad,' xiii. 459 sqq., we find him skulking well in the rear of the fighting line at a critical moment of the combat. Deiphobus goes in search of him ; and what is the result of his search?

TOV 8' VOTttTOV VptV 6/u'AoU

eo-TaoV.

Him he found apart Behind the crowd.

Then, again, in 'Iliad,' xvii. 533, we find him turning his back without even an effort to defend himself, and fleeing from the two Ajaces ; and although on this occasion he flees in good company that of Hector still the action or want of action was not credit- able to him :

VTroTapfBrjcravTes ex<apr]<ra.v irdXiv cams Atvetas T'.

Before them Hector and ^Eneas both ...... in alarm recoiled.

Ay, and in fleeing they basely abandoned their wounded comrade Aretus, and left him to be cut up !

Once more, in ' Iliad,' xx. 79 sqq., Apollo, in the borrowed form of Priam's son Lycaon, urges him to advance and meet the onset of Achilles, at the same time taunting him with his previous boasts over the winecups. But, oh, no ; the pious hero flatly declines to do anything of the kind, and unblushingly ad- mits that once before, on Mount Ida, he had run away from Pelides :

Hpia/j.i&r), ri p.e ravra KOI OVK fdkXovra. KcAeveis, &c.

Why, son of Priam, urge me to contend, Against my will, with Peleus' mighty son ? ...... I met him once

And fled before his spear on Ida's hill, &c.

And although he does, after all, for very shame, screw up his courage to confront Achilles, yet very shortly (as often on other occasions) he has to be delivered by that shabby device, the intervention of a god this time Neptune who blinds Achilles with a fog, and bears away our pious hero.

So much for Homer's testimony on the sub- ject. Now let us put Virgil into the witness box. In the second book of the '^Eneid ' we find this pious gentleman, during the sack of Troy, by his own admission, looking on calmly and passively at the slaughter of Priam by Pyrrhus ; making no sort of effort to inter- vene ; and not even apologizing for, or atj tempting to explain, his conduct ('yEneid,' ii, 501):

Vidi Hecubam centumque nurus, Priamumque per

aras Sanguine fcedantem, quos ipse sacraverat, ignes.

I saw the unhappy Queen,

The hundred wives, and where old Priam stood To stain his hallowed altars with his blood.

Then, again, his loss of his first wife, poor Creiisa, was, to say the least of it, "fishy." The whole of the circumstances attending