Book Description

Excerpt from The Works of Virgil, Vol. 2: Translated Into English Verse Suitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, destructive to the strength), but with brick or stone, though of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the crannies. Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling naviels, which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, Opposite to that which is designed in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One -conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, labouring and hastening in every line; the other slackens his pace, diverts him from his way, and locks him up like a knight errant in an en chanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well Ob served, was ambitions of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.