The Works of the English Poets: Dryden's Virgil

Front Cover
H. Hughs, 1779
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 348 - All were attentive to the godlike man, When from his lofty couch he thus began: 'Great queen, what you command me to relate, Renews the sad remembrance of our fate: An empire from its old foundations rent, And...
Page 181 - Yet, labouring well his little spot of ground, Some scattering potherbs here and there he found, Which cultivated with his daily care, And bruised with vervain, were his frugal fare.
Page 301 - But every man cannot distinguish between pedantry and poetry: every man, therefore, is not fit to innovate. Upon the whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin, and is to consider, in the next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom: after this, he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in both languages: and, lastly, since no man...
Page 288 - ... yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading better books, and by...
Page 292 - He studies brevity more than any other poet : but he had the advantage of a language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space.
Page 298 - What had become of me, if Virgil had taxed me with another book ? I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in hammered money, for want of milled...
Page 373 - Go thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!
Page 51 - He sung the secret seeds of Nature's frame; How seas, and earth, and air, and active flame, Fell through the mighty void, and, in their fall, Were blindly gather'd in this goodly ball. The tender soil then, stiff'ning by degrees, Shut from the bounded earth the bounding seas.
Page 143 - Or, stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil, And watches with a trip his foe to foil. Such was the life the frugal Sabines led; So Remus and his brother god were bred: From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose, And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Page 340 - And sumptuous feasts are made in splendid halls : On Tyrian carpets, richly wrought, they dine; With loads of massy plate the sideboards shine, And antique vases, all...

Bibliographic information