What Virgil lent, you pay in equal weight, The charming beauty of the coin no lefs And fuch the majefty of your impress, You feem the very author you tranflate. 'Tis certain, were he now alive with us, And did revolving destiny constrain, To drefs his thoughts in English o'er again, Himfelf could write no otherwife than thus. His old encomium never did appear So true as now; Romans and Greeks, fubmit. Something of late is in our language writ, More nobly great than the fam'd Iliads were. JA. WRIGHT. VIRGIL'S TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HUGH LORD CLIFFORD, BARON OF CHUDLEIGH MY LORD, HAVE found it not more difficult to tranflate Vir gil, than to find fuch Patrons as I defire for my tranflation. For though England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet fuch are my unhappy circumftances, that they have confined me to a narrow choice. To the greater part, I have not the honour to be known; and to fome of them I cannot fhew at prefent, by any public act, that grateful respect which I shall ever bear them in my heart. Yet I have no reason to complain of fortune, fince in the midst of that abundance I could not poffibly have chosen better, than the worthy fon of fo illuftrious a father. He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion of the world; though with fmall advantage to my fortune, till he awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus, who introduced introduced me to Auguftus: and though he foon difmiffed himself from state-affairs, yet in the fhort time of his administration he fhone fo powerfully upon me, that, like the heat of a Ruffian summer, he ripened the fruits of poetry in a cold climate; and gave me wherewithal to fubfift at least, in the long winter which fucceeded. What I now offer to your lordship is the wretched remainder of a fickly age, worn out with study, and oppreffed by fortune without other support than the conftancy and patience of a Christian. You, my lord, are yet in the flower of your youth, and may live to enjoy the benefits of the peace which is promifed Europe. I can only hear of that bleffing: for years, and, above all things, want of health, have shut me out from sharing in the happiness. The poets, who condemn their Tantalus to hell, had added to his torments, if they had placed him in Elyfium, which is the proper emblem of my condition. The fruit and the water may reach my lips, but cannot enter and if they could, yet I want a palate as well as a digestion. But it is fome kind of pleasure to me, to please those whom I refpect. And I am not altogether out of hope, that these Pastorals of Virgil may give your lordship fome delight, though made English by one, who scarce remembers that paffion which inspired my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay in poetry, (if the Ceiras was not his :) and it was more excufable in him to defcribe love when he was young, then for me to tranflate him when I am old. He died at the age of fifty-two, and I begin this work |