The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Aeneid of Virgil, by Virgil, Translated
by J. W. Mackail
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Title: The Aeneid of Virgil
Author: Virgil
Release Date: August 29, 2007 [eBook #22456]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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Transcriber's note:
Numbers in brackets [ ] refer to line numbers in Virgil's
Aeneid. These numbers appeared at the top of each page of text
and have been retained for reference.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A complete
list follows the text.
THE AENEID OF VIRGIL
Translated into English
by
J. W. MACKAIL, M.A.
Fellow Of Balliol College, Oxford
London
MacMillan and Co.
1885
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.
PREFACE
There is something grotesque in the idea of a prose translation of a
poet, though the practice is become so common that it has ceased to
provoke a smile or demand an apology. The language of poetry is language
in fusion; that of prose is language fixed and crystallised; and an
attempt to copy the one material in the other must always count on
failure to convey what is, after all, one of the most essential things
in poetry,--its poetical quality. And this is so with Virgil more,
perhaps, than with any other poet; for more, perhaps, than any other
poet Virgil depends on his poetical quality from first to last. Such a
translation can only have the value of a copy of some great painting
executed in mosaic, if indeed a copy in Berlin wool is not a closer
analogy; and even at the best all it can have to say for itself will be
in Virgil's own words, _Experiar sensus; nihil hic nisi carmina desunt._
In this translation I have in the main followed the text of Conington
and Nettleship. The more important deviations from this text are
mentioned in the notes; but I have not thought it necessary to give a
complete list of various readings, or to mention any change except where
it might lead to misapprehension. Th
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