Joseph Trapp

“The Preface to the Aeneis of Virgil (1718) by Joseph Trapp at Project Gutenberg”

“Better than Virgil? Yes—perhaps—But then, by Jove, 'tis Dr. Trapp's!”

“His book may continue its existence as long as it is the clandestine refuge of schoolboys.”

“Read the commandments, Trapp, translate no further;For there 'tis written, Thou shalt do no murder.”

“The king, observing with judicious eyesThe state of both his universities,To Oxford sent a troop of horse, and why?That learned body wanted loyalty;To Cambridge books, as very well discerningHow much that loyal body wanted learning.”

“A man cannot command his own motions while he reads this; the very verses are alive; and the reader is transported out of himself.”

“Some beauties are the more so, for not being capable of explanation. I feel it, though I cannot account for it.”

“When in her turn the moon obscure withdrawsHer light, and setting stars persuade to sleep:Lonely she pines within the empty court,Lies on the couch which just before []he left;Him absent, absent still she hears and sees.”

“As when, complaining in melodious groans,Sweet Philomel, beneath a poplar shade,Mourns her lost young, which some rough village hindObserving, from their nest, unfledged, has stole:She weeps all night; and, perched upon a bough,With plaintive notes repeated fills the grove.”

“Confounded with the crowd of various thoughts,And stiffening with amaze, the hero stood,In silence deep: within his bosom boilsDisdainful shame, and grief to madness wrought,And love inflamed with rage, and conscious worth.”

“To him the wind with doubtful terror waftsThe mingled noise: hoarse murmurs of distressAnd clamours from the city pierce his ears.Ah me! what sounds confused, what cries disturbThe town? Why rush the clamours from the walls?He said; and, with his coursers' reins repressed,In dumb amaze stood listening.”

“Here, in the brakes and savage dens of beasts,He nursed his daughter from the dugs of mares,Milking their teats into her tender lips.Soon as the infant first with doubtful feetCould press the ground, her little hands he filledWith pointed darts, and on her shoulder hungA bow and quiver. No soft caul of goldHer tresses strains; nor flows her waving gown:Instead of these a tiger's horrid hideHangs from her head, and over her back descends.Darts with her tender hand even then she threw;And, whirling round her head a sounding sling,Struck a Strymonian crane, or snow-white swan.”

“Two gates of sleep there are: the one of horn,Through which with ease the real phantoms pass;With polished elephant the other shines,Through which the manes send false dreams to light.”

“Aurora, from Tithonus' saffron bedNow rising, sprinkled over the world with light.”

“If Helenus has any skill,If any faith, and if Apollo rightInspires his prophet: one thing, goddess-born,One thing, above the rest, I will advise,and oft repeat it: with religious prayerFirst Juno's deity adore; to herPay willing sacrifices, and with vows,Suppliant, overpower the mighty queen of heaven.”

“Her Amazonian files with lunar shieldsPenthesilea leads, and in the midstOf thousand storms, beneath her naked papHer golden belt she buckles, warlike maid,And, though a virgin, dares engage with men.”

“Arms and the man I sing who first from TroyCame to the Italian and Lavinian shores,Exiled by fate; much tossed on land and seaBy power divine and cruel Juno's rage;Much too in war he suffered, till he rearedA city and to Latium brought his gods:Whence sprung the Latin progeny, the kingsOf Alba, and the walls of towering Rome.”

“Of mine the world will and ought to be judge, whatever I say or think, and its judgment in these matters is never erroneous.”

“His versification here, as everywhere else, is generally flowing and harmonious, and a multitude of beauties of all kinds are scattered through the whole. But then, besides his often grossly mistaking his author's sense, as a translator he is extremely licentious. Whatever he alledges to the contrary in his preface, he makes no scruple of adding or retrenching as his turn is best served by either. In many places, where he shines most as a poet he is least a translator, and where you most admire Mr. Dryden, you see least of Virgil.”

“If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they have my free leave to enjoy their saying, provided I may have theirs to think they mean nothing by it, unless they can prove that rhyme is essential to metre; consequently that the Goths and monks were the first inventers of verse, and that Homer and Virgil, as well as Milton, wrote nothing but prose.”