Read it through once

I think that we are conscious, in Virgil more than in any other Latin poet—for Catullus and Propertius seem ruffians, and Horace somewhat plebeian, by comparison—of a refinement of manners springing from a delicate sensibility, and particularly in that test of manners, private and public conduct between the sexes. It is not for me, in a gathering of people, all of whom may be better scholars than I, to review the story of Aeneas and Dido. But I have always thought the meeting of Aeneas with the shade of Dido, in Book VI, not only one of the most poignant, but one of the most civilised passages in poetry. It is complex in meaning and economical in expression, for it not only tells us about the attitude of Dido—what is still more important is what it tells us about the attitude of Aeneas. Dido's behaviour appears almost as a projection of Aeneas' own conscience: this, we feel, is the way in which Aeneas' conscience would expect Dido to behave to him.