“On the Chance”: An Allusion to Vergil’s Aeneid in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows

Rat’s description of Otter’s search for his missing son, Portly, in Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows contains an allusion to Aeneas’ search for his wife, Creusa, in book 2 of Vergil’s Aeneid during the final fall of Troy. This reference economically imports a number of elements more appropriate to epic than pastoral literature. The result is a heightened sense of emotion and concern but, ironically, the reinforcement of the boundaries of the idyllic pastoral world.