I was reading Christina Rossetti's well-known poem 'Remember'
yesterday and wondered if she had Purcell's famous aria 'Remember me'
from Dido and Aeneas in mind when she wrote it.  Or Marlowe's 'Dido
Queen of Carthage', or, indeed, the Aeneid itself.  Any of these could
have been quite fresh in her mind as she wrote 'Remember' when she was
only nineteen and therefore not long out of education.

I wonder if anybody knows if there is this link between Rossetti and
Virgil?  Inter alia, I looked through Latin and English versions of
the Aeneid to see if I could find any lines that particularly carried
this powerful 'remember me' message, but failed to do so.  Is there,
in fact, a passage, or passages that was the original (and the best)
for these later imitations?

There's the line (4.335) in Day-Lewis's translation when Aeneas says
"I shall not forget my memories of [you]" but it would be nice if
there were something from the lips of Dido.

Patrick Roper

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