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There are parts of the "AEneis" which resemble some parts both of the "Ilias" and of the "Odysses;" as, for example, AEneas descended into hell, and Ulysses had been there before him; AEneas loved Dido, and Ulysses loved Calypso: in few words, Virgil hath imitated Homer's "Odysses" in his first six books, and in his six last the "Ilias."
I doubt not but one reason why Augustus should be so passionately concerned for the preservation of the "AEneis," which its author had condemned to be burnt as an imperfect poem by his last will and testament, was because it did him a real service as well as an honour; that a work should not be lost where his divine original was celebrated in verse which had the character of immortality stamped upon it.
The painters draw their nymphs in thin and airy habits, but the weight of gold and of embroideries is reserved for queens and goddesses. Virgil is never frequent in those turns, like Ovid, but much more sparing of them in his "AEneis" than in his Pastorals and Georgics. "Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes."
I am now drawing towards a conclusion, and suspect your lordship is very glad of it. But permit me first to own what helps I have had in this undertaking. The late Earl of Lauderdale sent me over his new translation of the "AEneis," which he had ended before I engaged in the same design.
These are the single stars which are sprinkled through the "AEneis," but there are whole constellations of them in the fifth book; and I could not but take notice, when I translated it, of some favourite families to which he gives the victory and awards the prizes, in the person of his hero, at the funeral games which were celebrated in honour of Anchises.
Annibale Caro is a great name amongst the Italians, yet his translation of the "AEneis" is most scandalously mean, though he has taken the advantage of writing in blank verse, and freed himself from the shackles of modern rhyme if it be modern; for Le Clerc has told us lately, and I believe has made it out, that David's Psalms were written in as errant rhyme as they are translated.
I think I need use no other argument to justify my opinion than that of this one line taken from the eighth book of the AEneis. If he had not well studied his patron's temper it might have ruined him with another prince.
"Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum Fata tibi," &c. Notwithstanding which the goddess, though comforted, was not assured; for even after this, through the course of the whole "AEneis," she still apprehends the interest which Juno might make with Jupiter against her son.
The majestic way of Persius and Juvenal was new when they began it, but it is old to us; and what poems have not, with time, received an alteration in their fashion? "which alteration," says Holyday, "is to after-times as good a warrant as the first." Has not Virgil changed the manners of Homer's heroes in his AEneis?
Let the reader weigh them both, and if he thinks me partial to Chaucer, it is in him to right Boccace. I prefer in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, which is of the Epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the Ilias or the Aeneis.
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