ABSTRACT
Few things are more interesting than to study a poet's translation of a poet (now unhappily a rare phenomenon), and to observe how the translator in reading, as it were, the heart of his brother, breathes a new spirit into his utterances, recasts his work in another mould, and enables men to enjoy it afresh in another aspect and in the feeling of a living inspiration. And it should be added that apart from the general interest which on this ground must attach to Mr. Morris's work, he is entitled to special gratitude for having grappled with a poem which no translator but a poet is likely to handle with sustained success. The Aeneid (why Aeneids Mr. Morris should explain) is a work so complex in its texture, so full ofpoetical reserve, ofso exquisite a workmanship, and uniting so many elements of epic majesty, romance, pathos, eloquence, that if the air of poetry be wanting to it a translation of Virgil is apt at times to flag, or to lapse into dulness and rhetoric.
