26: Warton prefers Fenton's verses, but in my opinion these
lines of Lord Lyttelton's are much superior to all the other
recommendatory verses. They are as elegant and correct in themselves, as
the sentiments they convey appear sincere, and worthy an ingenuous,
cultivated, and liberal mind. There is a small inaccuracy in one or two
expressions, and perhaps it would have been better if Virgil's speech,
which forms the conclusion, had been compressed.--BOWLES.]

TRANSLATIONS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following Translations were selected from many others done by the
author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of exercises,
while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his
early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr.
Dryden's Fables came out about that time,[1] which occasioned the
translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in
Miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the
quarto edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which are
added at the end, were done as early; some of them at fourteen or
fifteen years old; but having also got into Miscellanies, we have put
them here together to complete this juvenile volume.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the year 1700. They were the most popular of Dryden's
works, and were in the hands of every reader when Pope was learning his
art.]

[Footnote 2: This advertisement was first prefixed by Pope to vol. iii.
of his works, 8vo, 1736. The contents of the "juvenile volume" were The
Temple of Fame, Sappho to Phaon, Vertumnus and Pomona, The Fable of
Dryope, The first book of Statius's Thebais, January and May, The Wife
of Bath's Prologue, and the Imitations of English Poets. Pope apologises
for printing the Imitations by saying that they had got into
Miscellanies, which is an insinuation that the pieces had found their
way to the press without his consent. It was he himself who published
them. They are inserted in the present edition among the minor poems.]

THE

FIRST BOOK OF STATIUS:

HIS

THEBAIS.

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR 1703.

The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece,
which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better
upon review than he expected from those years, he was easily prevailed
on to give it some correction, the rather because no part of this author
(at least that he knows of) has