as to his author's sense, and even in the charms of poetry. This
perhaps, will be best discovered by producing a few shining passages of
the Aeneid, translated by these two great masters.

In biographical writing, the first and most essential principal is
candour, which no reverence for the memory of the dead, nor affection
for the virtues of the living should violate. The impartiality which we
have endeavoured to observe through this work, obliges us to declare,
that so far as our judgment may be trusted, the latter poet has done
most justice to Virgil; that he mines in Pitt with a lustre, which
Dryden wanted not power, but leisure to bestow; and a reader, from
Pitt's version, will both acquire a more intimate knowledge of Virgil's
meaning, and a more exalted idea of his abilities.--Let not this detract
from the high representations we have endeavoured in some other places
to make of Dryden. When he undertook Virgil, he was stooping with age,
oppressed with wants, and conflicting with infirmities. In this
situation, it was no wonder that much of his vigour was lost; and we
ought rather to admire the amazing force of genius, which was so little
depressed under all these calamities, than industriously to dwell on his
imperfections.

Mr. Spence in one of his chapters on Allegory, in his Polymetis, has
endeavoured to shew, how very little our poets have understood the
allegories of the antients, even in their translations of them; and has
instanced Mr. Dryden's translation of the Aeneid, as he thought him one
of our most celebrated poets. The mistakes are very numerous, and some
of them unaccountably gross. Upon this, says Mr. Warton, "I was desirous
to examine Mr. Pitt's translation of the same passages; and was
surprized to find near fifty instances which Mr. Spence has given of
Dryden's mistakes of that kind, when Mr. Pitt had not fallen into above