PREFACE.
The publication of a new translation of Virgil's Æneid is a thing which may not unreasonably be thought to require a few prefatory words of excuse. It is true that the ground has not been pre-occupied of late years by any version which has attained any great degree of popularity. Previous to the present century, the extant translations of the Æneid outnumbered those of the Iliad and Odyssey in the proportion of nearly three to one: now, while the press is sending forth version after version of one or both of the Homeric poems, scarcely any one thinks it worth his while to attempt a translation of the Roman epic. But it may fairly be doubted whether Dryden did not close the question a hundred and seventy years ago for any one not, like himself, a poet of commanding original power. In the century which succeeded him many literary men thought that they could improve upon him in various ways: but the verdict of posterity has shown that they judged wrongly. Pitt is the only one of these whose version can be said to be at present in existence: a dubious privilege which it owes to the fact of its having been included in the successive collections of English poetry of which Johnson's was the first. Dryden's style in poetry is sufficiently
