Virgil, above all others, has shown himself a great observer. So proficient is he that often, by the mere sound of words chosen, he actually puts before us the thing described. If he speaks of love, his words are so skillfully brought together that a sweet harmony results, whereas, when he sings of warlike deeds or describes a tempest, the verse hastens, and the resonant sounds admirably depict a scene of fury, tumult, and terror.

In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence.

A critical sense of style and of poetic form is not easy to attain, nor is it of first importance for the younger, or, indeed, for any student of Virgil. Wide open to anyone who is willing to learn is the richer knowledge of Virgil as a poet who loved his country and who loved also that humanity which existed before Rome, exists today within ourselves, and will exist long after our own civilization, like that of Virgil's Rome, has become a matter of "ancient history." It is true that the longer one has lived the better one can appreciate a poem which is concerned with life. But the gain that comes to us with the years depends, partly at least, upon the riches we have been willing to extract from literature, which is the experience of other men and women written out. In youth's search for this treasure the Aeneid will be at once a fair haven and a port of departure.

To my mind, that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.

That noble-minded poet alone merits praise whose word, like the sentence of a judge, keeps free from love or hatred in recording the past.

for in history there is nothing more pleasing than clear and brilliant brevity.

This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.

W is to be found the best text of ? Of the many s before the public, which one is the one to be preferred? These are questions which are pretty certain to be asked by him who is about to take up for the first time the study of that author's dramatic productions. It may and it sometimes does cause a feeling of disappointment when the answer is made—as no other answer can fairly be made—that not only is there no best edition of Shakespeare's works, but there never can be and never will be one.

The peculiar rigidity of the English mind is seen at its noblest in the Times literary supplement.

Perhaps the editor may be accused of nationality, when he says, that, taking the total merits of this work together, he prefers it to the early exertions of even the Italian muse, to the melancholy sublimity of Dante, and the amorous quaintness of Petrarca…Here indeed the reader will find few of the graces of fine poetry, little of the attic dress of the muse; but here are life and spirit, and ease and plain sense, and pictures of real manners, and perpetual incident and entertainment. The language is remarkably good for the time, and far superior in neatness and elegance even to that of Gawin Douglass, who wrote more than a century after.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ

No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses Milton in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words.

Not too high, nor too low—is of all styles the best,
As the epics of Homer and Virgil attest.

It may be said, without exaggeration, that there is no other text which is documented by such varied types of sources.