‘Sat patriae Priamoque datum.’

By the by, there is the same sort of anticipation in a spirited and harmonious couplet preceding: 

    ’Such as he was when by Pelides slain
    Thessalian coursers dragged him o’er the plain.’

This introduction of Pelides here is not in Virgil, because it would have prevented the effect of

    ‘Redit exuvias indutus Achillei.’

There is a striking solemnity in the answer of Pantheus to Aeneas: 

    ’Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus
    Dardaniae:  fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, et ingens
    Gloria Teucrorum,’ &c.

Dryden thus gives it: 

          ’Then Pantheus, with a groan,
    Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town. 
    The fatal day, the appointed hour is come
    When wrathful Jove’s irrevocable doom
    Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian hands. 
    The fire consumes the town, the foe commands.’

My own translation runs thus; and I quote it because it occurred to my mind immediately on reading your Lordship’s observations: 

          ’Tis come, the final hour,
    Th’ inevitable close of Dardan power
    Hath come! we have been Trojans, Ilium was,
    And the great name of Troy; now all things pass
    To Argos.  So wills angry Jupiter. 
    Amid a burning town the Grecians domineer.’

I cannot say that ‘we have been,’ and ‘Ilium was,’ are as sonorous sounds as ‘fuimus,’ and ‘fuit;’ but these latter must have been as familiar to the Romans as the former to ourselves.  I should much like to know if your Lordship disapproves of my translation here.  I have one word to say upon ornament.  It was my wish and labour that my translation should have far more of the genuine ornaments of Virgil than my predecessors.  Dryden has been very careless of these, and profuse of his own, which seem to me very rarely to harmonise with those of Virgil; as, for example, describing Hector’s appearance in the passage above alluded to,

    ’A bloody shroud, he seemed, and bath’d in tears. 
    I wept to see the visionary man.’

Again,

    ’And all the wounds he for his country bore
    Now streamed afresh, and with new purple ran.’

I feel it, however, to be too probable that my translation is deficient in ornament, because I must unavoidably have lost many of Virgil’s, and have never without reluctance attempted a compensation of my own.  Had I taken the liberties of my predecessors, Dryden especially, I could have translated nine books with the labour that three have cost me.  The third book, being of a humbler character than either of the former, I have treated with rather less scrupulous apprehension, and have interwoven a little of my own; and, with permission, I will send it, ere long, for the benefit of your Lordship’s observations, which really will be of great service to me if I proceed.  Had I begun the work fifteen years ago, I should have finished it with pleasure; at present, I fear it will take more time than I either can or ought to spare.  I do not think of going beyond the fourth book.