He might be a champion of the Church,
but we know not that he was so much as present at the siege. To
apply this to Virgil, he thought himself engaged in honour to
espouse the cause and quarrel of his country against Carthage. He
knew he could not please the Romans better, or oblige them more to
patronise his poem, than by disgracing the foundress of that city.
He shows her ungrateful to the memory of her first husband, doting
on a stranger, enjoyed and afterwards forsaken by him. This was the
original, says he, of the immortal hatred betwixt the two rival
nations. It is true, he colours the falsehood of AEneas by an
express command from Jupiter to forsake the queen who had obliged
him; but he knew the Romans were to be his readers, and them he
bribed--perhaps at the expense of his hero's honesty; but he gained
his cause, however, as pleading before corrupt judges. They were
content to see their founder false to love, for still he had the
advantage of the amour. It was their enemy whom he forsook, and she
might have forsaken him if he had not got the start of her.
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