Thus I hope, my lord, that I have made good my promise, and
justified the poet, whatever becomes of the false knight. And,
sure, a poet is as much privileged to lie as an ambassador for the
honour and interest of his country--at least, as Sir Henry Wotton
has defined.
This naturally leads me to the defence of the famous anachronism in
making AEneas and Dido contemporaries, for it is certain that the
hero lived almost two hundred years before the building of Carthage.
One who imitates Boccalini says that Virgil was accused before
Apollo for this error. The god soon found that he was not able to
defend his favourite by reason, for the case was clear; he therefore
gave this middle sentence: that anything might be allowed to his
son Virgil on the account of his other merits; that, being a
monarch, he had a dispensing power, and pardoned him. But that this
special act of grace might never be drawn into example, or pleaded
by his puny successors in justification of their ignorance, he
decreed for the future--no poet should presume to make a lady die
for love two hundred years before her birth.
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