had drank of that River, it was decreed by the Fates, that Troy should not be taken. Diomed slew Rhaesus and his Guards, and drove away the Horses the same Night they arriv’d in the Trojan Camp.
I shall close these few Remarks with a Word or two concerning this Translation. I have endeavour’d, thro’ the Whole, to practise my Lord Roscommon’s Rule,
Your Author always will the best advise;
Fall as he falls, and as he rises, rise.
but with what Success, is with all Deference submitted to the Reader; I have us’d a few of Mr. Dryden’s Rhimes and Expressions, where he adheres closely to the Sense of Virgil, or I must have wander’d from the Original myself; but I have not been so free with him, in this Particular, as he is with my Lord Lauderdale. Had I borrow’d more from him, this Translation, perhaps, had been so much the better. Far be it from me, therefore, to think I am able to do Virgil justice, or to improve on Mr. Dryden’s Translation; the utmost Merit I pretend to, is to have avoided those low and vulgar Expressions, and technical Terms, and Deviations from the Original, which he is guilty of too frequently; if I may be allow’d to deliver my Opinion of Mr. Dryden’s Performance, after so great a Judge as Mr. Pope, it
