Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/23

 Troy, or London. Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century sets forth this tale in his history. It was believed down to the seventeenth century and is reported by Milton. Elizabethan literature has frequent references to it. Chaucer in his House of Fame outlines the Æneid, emphasizing the Dido episode, which interested also Nash, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. Spenser teems with allusions and indeed translations, so—

"Anchyses sonne, begott of Venus fayre," Said he, "out of the flames for safegard fled And with a remnant did to sea repayre; Where he, through fatall errour, long was led Full many yeares, and weetlesse wandered From shore to shore emongst the Lybick sandes Ere rest he fownd."—F. Q., III., ix., 41.

and—

"Like a great water-flood, that, tombling low From the high mountaines, threates to overflow With suddein fury all the fertile playne, And the sad husbandmans long hope doth throw Adown the streame, and all his vowes make vayne, Nor bounds nor banks his headlong ruine may sustayne." —F. Q., II., xi., 18; cf. Æn. II., 304 ff.

Bacon calls Virgil "the chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of man is known." "Milton," writes Dryden, "has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original." But beside this indirect influence, and that through the Italian school, Virgil's direct influence on Milton is attested by many an allusion. Dryden, Cowper, with his "sweet Maro's matchless strain," Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, with his "sweet, tender Virgil," freely acknowledge the debt they owe our poet. Dryden and Morris translated the Æneid into verse.

Tennyson, "the most Virgilian of modern poets," gives the following tribute, written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of Virgil's death:—