Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. It is with unfeigned diffidence that I offer to the public a new attempt to render the Eneid into English verse. The world, it may be feared, is becoming sated with translations from the classic poets, which have of late years issued in extraordinary numbers from the press. Yet it is by means of such a competition of translators that the desired result is most likely to be attained. The version which the general judgment pronounces to be the best obtains possession of the field: the unsuccessful sink into oblivion. To represent worthily through the medium of another language the work of one of the most consummate masters of diction in the whole range of literature, is a task sufficiently arduous in itself; and in the case of the Eneid a newtranslator may well feel daunted by the great names and high reputation of his predecessors. The number of English writers who have tried their hands on the great Latin epic is very considerable, though but few are at the present day held in much estimation. Without disparaging other versions, it may fairly be said that there are two which any new aspirant must regard as his most formidable competitors —viz., those of Dryden and of the late Professor Conington. Each of these works, widely as they differ in character and style, unquestionably possesses great merit. It would be the height of presumption to question the genius of Dryden, to whom, though his poetry is not much in accordance with the taste of the present day, common consent has assigned a prominent place in the hierarchy of English poets. But without at all disparaging his title to the rank which he thus holds, I cannot think either that Dryden's translation of the Eneid deserves to be placed on a level with his own greatest works, or that it bears that true resembl... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.