Virgil, 1688–1700: A Watershed Of English Literature

Abstract

Dryden’s Works of Virgil (1697) was hailed as England’s long-awaited epic, and the poet was celebrated in commendatory poems for offering new hope and resurrecting Virgil’s majesty from stifling “dogrel” and “mangling Ogleby’s presumptuous Quill”:

thy Virgil’s awful Shade, Whom thou hast rais’d to bless our happy Land, Does circl’d round with radiant Honours stand: He’s now the welcom Native of our Isle, And crowns our Hopes with an auspicious Smile ….¹

According to these poets, whose praises preface the first editions, Virgil is still the key to English national glory, and Dryden has achieved what Virgil would have were he alive in England at this moment. His “Copy share[s] an equal praise” with Virgil’s original, and “’Tis certain, were he [Virgil] now alive with us” then “Himself cou’d write no otherwise than thus” (Dryden, Works 5: 57–64).² The Augustan epic mission is still feasible in 169os England, it would seem, and Dryden’s splendid translation has achieved it.