Yet the omissions, I hope, are but of
circumstances, and such as would have no grace in English; and the
additions, I also hope, are easily deduced from Virgil's sense.
They will seem (at least, I have the vanity to think so), not stuck
into him, but growing out of him. He studies brevity more than any
other poet; but he had the advantage of a language wherein much may
be comprehended in a little space. We and all the modern tongues
have more articles and pronouns, besides signs of tenses and cases,
and other barbarities on which our speech is built, by the faults of
our forefathers. The Romans founded theirs upon the Greek; and the
Greeks, we know, were labouring many hundred years upon their
language before they brought it to perfection. They rejected all
those signs, and cut off as many articles as they could spare,
comprehending in one word what we are constrained to express in two;
which is one reason why we cannot write so concisely as they have
done. The word pater, for example, signifies not only "a father,"
but "your father," "my father," "his or her father"--all included in
a word.
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