recommended it, as his favourite, to my care; and for his sake particularly, I have made it mine. For who would confess weariness, when he enjoined a fresh labour? I could not but invoke the assistance of a Muse, for this last office.

5

Neither am I to forget the noble present which was made me by Gilbert Dolben, Esq., the worthy son of the late Archbishop of York, who, when I began this to work, enriched me with all the several editions of Virgil, and all the commentaries of those editions in Latin; amongst which, I could not but prefer the Dauphin's 1, as the last, the shortest, and the most judicious. Fabrini I had also sent me from Italy; but 15 either he understands Virgil very imperfectly, or I have no knowledge of my author.

Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir William Bowyer, to Denham Court, I translated the First Georgic at his house, and the greatest part of the last 20 Eneid. A more friendly entertainment no man ever found. No wonder, therefore, if both those versions. surpass the rest, and own the satisfaction I received in his converse, with whom I had the honour to be bred in Cambridge, and in the same college. The Seventh 25 Æneid was made English at Burleigh, the magnificent abode of the Earl of Exeter. In a village belonging to his family I was born; and under his roof I endeavoured to make that Eneid appear in English with as much lustre as I could; though my author has not given the 30 finishing strokes either to it, or to the Eleventh, as I perhaps could prove in both, if I durst presume to criticise my master.

The Dolphins, ed. 1697.

By a letter from William Walsh, of Abberley, Esq. (who has so long honoured me with his friendship, and who, without flattery, is the best critic of our nation), I have been informed, that his Grace the Duke of 5 Shrewsbury has procured a printed copy of the Pastorals, Georgics, and first six Æneids, from my bookseller, and has read them in the country, together with my friend. This noble person having been pleased to give them a commendation, which I presume not to insert, 10 has made me vain enough to boast of so great a favour, and to think I have succeeded beyond my hopes; the character of his excellent judgment, the acuteness of his wit, and his general knowledge of good letters, being known as well to all the world, as the sweetness of his 15 disposition, his humanity, his easiness of access, and desire of obliging those who stand in need of his protection, are known to all who have approached him, and to me in particular, who have formerly had the honour of his conversation. Whoever has given the world the 20 translation of part of the Third Georgic, which he calls The Power of Love, has put me to sufficient pains to make my own not inferior to his; as my Lord Roscommon's Silenus had formerly given me the same trouble. The most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford has also 25 been as troublesome to me as the other two, and on the same account. After his Bees, my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving. Mr. Cowley's Praise of a Country Life is excellent, but is rather an imitation of Virgil than a version. That I have recovered, in some 30 measure, the health which I had lost by too much

application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment. The whole Faculty has 35 always been ready to oblige me; and the only one of

them, who endeavoured to defame me, had it not in his power. I desire pardon from my readers for saying so much in relation to myself, which concerns not them; and, with my acknowledgments to all my subscribers, have only to add, that the few Notes which follow are 5 ・ par manière d'acquit, because I had obliged myself by articles to do somewhat of that kind. These scattering observations are rather guesses at my author's meaning in some passages, than proofs that so he meant. The unlearned may have recourse to any poetical dictionary 10 in English, for the names of persons, places, or fables, which the learned need not: but that little which I say is either new or necessary; and the first of these qualifications never fails to invite a reader, if not to please him.

15

PREFACE

TO THE FABLES

[1700]

'Tis with a Poet, as with a man who designs to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; but, generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short of the expense 5 he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So has it happened to me; I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge; yet with better success than 10 a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had contrived.

From translating the First of Homer's Iliads, (which I intended as an essay to the whole work,) I proceeded to the translation of the Twelfth Book of Ovid's Meta15 morphoses, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not balk 'em. When I had compassed them, 20 I was so taken with the former part of the Fifteenth Book, (which is the masterpiece of the whole Metamorphoses,) that I enjoined myself the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the

number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books there occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natured story of Baucis 5 and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say, without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the 10 ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language, 15 and who saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax; for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once 20 insinuates, that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body; and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spenser was his original; and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he 25 derived the harmony of his numbers from Godfrey of Bulloign, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.

But to return: having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet, 30 Chaucer, in many things resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of the modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare them; and as I am, and always have been, studious to promote the honour of my native country, so I soon resolved 35