I insist not on their names, but am pleased to
find the Memmii amongst them, derived from Mnestheus, because
Lucretius dedicates to one of that family, a branch of which
destroyed Corinth. I likewise either found or formed an image to
myself of the contrary kind--that those who lost the prizes were
such as had disobliged the poet, or were in disgrace with Augustus,
or enemies to Maecenas; and this was the poetical revenge he took,
for genus irritabile vatum, as Horace says. When a poet is
thoroughly provoked, he will do himself justice, how ever dear it
cost him, animamque in vulnere ponit. I think these are not bare
imaginations of my own, though I find no trace of them in the
commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself. The
vengeance we defer is not forgotten. I hinted before that the whole
Roman people were obliged by Virgil in deriving them from Troy, an
ancestry which they affected. We and the French are of the same
humour: they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of
Hector; and we would have our Britain both named and planted by a
descendant of AEneas.
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