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It was not therefore for nothing that the most judicious of all poets made that office vacant by the death of Pantheus, in the second book of the "AEneis," for his hero to succeed in it, and consequently for Augustus to enjoy. I know not that any of the commentators have taken notice of that passage.
For my own part, I am rather of the opinion that they were added by Tucca and Varius, than retrenched. I know it may be answered by such as think Virgil the author of the four lines that he asserts his title to the "AEneis" in the beginning of this work, as he did to the two former, in the last lines of the fourth Georgic.
But in defence of Virgil, I dare positively say that he has been more cautious in this particular than either his predecessor or his descendants; for AEneas was actually wounded in the twelfth of the "AEneis," though he had the same godsmith to forge his arms as had Achilles. It seems he was no "war-luck," as the Scots commonly call such men, who, they say, are iron-free or lead-free.
And such is Virgil's episode of Dido and AEneas, where the sourest critic must acknowledge that if he had deprived his "AEneis" of so great an ornament, because he found no traces of it in antiquity, he had avoided their unjust censure, but had wanted one of the greatest beauties of his poem. I shall say more of this in the next article of their charge against him, which is want of invention.
Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the "AEneis," and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has shown me many faults, which I have endeavoured to correct. It is true he might have easily found more, and then my translation had been more perfect.
Venus, after the destruction of Troy, had gained Neptune entirely to her party; therefore we find him busy in the beginning of the "AEneis" to calm the tempest raised by AEolus, and afterwards conducting the Trojan fleet to Cumes in safety, with the loss only of their pilot, for whom he bargains.
He also translated the first four books of Virgil his Aeneis into quantitative hexameters, on the unsound pedantic principles which Gabriel Harvey was at that time trying so hard to establish in English prosody; but the experiment, which turned out so badly in the master's hands, fared even worse in those of the disciple, and Stanyhurst's lines will always stand as a noted specimen of inept translation and ridiculous versification.
That turn is beautiful indeed; but he employs it in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, not in his great poem. I have used that licence in his "AEneis" sometimes, but I own it as my fault; it was given to those who understand no better. It is like Ovid's "Semivirumque bovem, semibovemque virum."
Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the fifth of his "AEneis," the son of Polites, youngest son to Priam, who was slain by Pyrrhus in the second book. AEneas had only married Creusa, Priam's daughter, and by her could have no title while any of the male issue were remaining. In this case the poet gave him the next title, which is that of an Elective King.
In the meantime I may affirm, in honour of this episode, that it is not only now esteemed the most pleasing entertainment of the "AEneis," but was so accounted in his own age, and before it was mellowed into that reputation which time has given it; for which I need produce no other testimony than that of Ovid, his contemporary:
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