Page:Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages.djvu/146



THE first idea of the following piece was taken from a Latin poem of Vida, entitled, which was translated into Italian by Marino, and inserted in the fifteenth Canto of his Adonis: the author thought it fair to make an acknowledgment in the notes for the passages which he borrowed from those two poets; but he must also do them the justice to declare, that most of the descriptions, and the whole story of Caïssa, which is written in imitation of Ovid, are his own, and their faults must be imputed to him only. The characters in the poem are no less imaginary than those in the episode; in which the invention of Chess is poetically ascribed to Mars, though it is certain that the game was originally brought from India.