But I am sensible I have presumed too far to entertain you with a rude discourse of that art, which you both know so well, and put into practice with so much happiness.  Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master in this poem:  I have followed him everywhere, I know not with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough:  my images are many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him.  My expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in translation.  And this, sir, I have done with that boldness, for which I will stand accountable to any of our little critics, who, perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am.  Upon your first perusal of this poem, you have taken notice of some words which I have innovated (if it be too bold for me to say refined) upon his Latin; which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verse; and, in this, Horace will again defend me.

  Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si
  Graeco fonte cadunt, parce detorta—­

The inference is exceeding plain:  for if a Roman poet might have liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best and most judicious of Latin writers!  In some places, where either the fancy or the words were his, or any other’s, I have noted it in the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary; in others I have neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of doing it too often.  Such descriptions or images well wrought, which I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object; as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the same reason beget laughter:  for the one shows nature beautified, as in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shows her deformed, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face and antique gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it is a deviation from nature.  But though the same images serve equally for the Epic poesy, and for the historic and panegyric, which are branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be used in them.  If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, Stantes in curribus AEmiliani, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, Spirantia mollius oera:  there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shown in them.  You will soon find I write not this without concern.  Some, who have seen a paper of verses, which I wrote last year to her Highness the Duchess, have accused