The PREFACE.
Poet is wholly a Digression, and the other necessary and essential to the Æneid. That which our Author design'd to answer the Speech of Æneas to Dido, is doubtless the Speech of one of Prince Arthur's Attendants, Lucius, to King Hoel: As appears if we compare the Beginning of this Speech to the beginning of that in the Æneid. Lucius begins thus:
How sad a task do your Commands impose
That must renew unsufferable Woes?
That must our Grief with sad Affliction feed,
And make your generous Heart with pity bleed.
Whilst I the dismal Scenes of ills disclose,
And bleeding Albion's ghastly wounds expose.
The Cruel Foes in telling would relent,
And with their Tears, the Spoils, they caus'd lament.
Pity would Picts and Saxon Breasts invade,
And make them mourn, o'er the dire Wounds they made.
But since you're pleas'd to hear our Countries fate,
I'll pay Obedience, and our Woes relate.
Now all this is an exact Copy of the Beginning of Æneas's Speech to Dido, which runs thus:
Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem:
Trojanas ut opes & lamentabite regnum
Eruerint Danai, quæque ipse miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui. Quis talla fando,
Myrmidonum, Dolopûmve, aut duri miles Ʋlyssel,
Temperet à Lacrymis? Et jam nox humida coelo
Præcipitat, suadentque cadentia Sydera somnos.
Sed si tantus amor casus cognoscere nostros,
Et breviter Trojæ supremum audire laborem,
Quanquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit: Incipiam.
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