" "And here," said he, "in the first place, I must needs own
Jacob Tonson's ingenuity to be greater than the translator's, who, in
the inscription of his fine gay (title) in the front of the book, calls
it very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is
not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom
Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp,
of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a
various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior
to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the
name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters in the
frontispiece, and in the running title. Indeed, there is scarce the
_magni nominis umbra_ to be met with in this translation, which being
fairly intimated by Jacob, he needs add no more, but _si populus vult
decipi, decipiatur._"
With an assurance which induced Pope to call him the fairest of critics,
not content with criticising the production of Dryden, Milbourne was so
ill advised as to produce, and place in opposition to it, a rickety
translation of his own, probably the fragments of that which had been
suppressed by Dryden's version. A short specimen, both of his criticism
and poetry, will convince the reader, that the powers of the former
were, as has been often the case, neutralised by the insipidity of the
latter; for who can rely on the judgment of a critic so ill qualified to
illustrate his own precepts? I take the remarks on the tenth Eclogue, as
a specimen, at hazard.
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