I will not reply otherwise to this,
than by desiring them to compare these four lines with the four
others, which we know are his, because no poet but he alone could
write them. If they cannot distinguish creeping from flying, let
them lay down Virgil, and take up Ovid de Ponto in his stead. My
master needed not the assistance of that preliminary poet to prove
his claim: his own majestic mien discovers him to be the king
amidst a thousand courtiers. It was a superfluous office, and
therefore I would not set those verses in the front of Virgil; but
have rejected them to my own preface:
"I, who before, with shepherds in the groves,
Sung to my oaten pipe their rural loves,
And issuing thence, compelled the neighb'ring field
A plenteous crop of rising corn to yield;
Manured the glebe, and stocked the fruitful plain
(A poem grateful to the greedy swain)," &c.
If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the prefacer gave
me no occasion to write better. This is a just apology in this
place; but I have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole
translation.
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