Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/111

 ''transpositions for the elegance of the sound and sense, which are wanting so much in modern Languages. The French sometimes crowd together ten, or twelve Monosyllables, into one disjointed Verse; they may understand the nature of, but cannot imitate, those wonderful Spondees of Pythagoras, by which he could suddenly pacifie a Man that was in a violent transport of anger; nor those swift numbers of the Priests of Cybele, which had the force to enrage the most sedate and Phlegmatick Tempers. Nor can any Modern put into his own Language the Energy of that single Poem of'' Catullus,

Latin is but a corrupt dialect of Greek; and the French, Spanish, and Italian, a corruption of Latin; and therefore a Man might as well go about to persuade me that Vinegar is a Nobler Liquor than Wine, as that the modern Compositions can be as graceful and harmonious as the Latin'' it self. The Greek Tongue very naturally falls into Iambicks, and therefore the diligent Reader may find six or seven and twenty of them in those accurate Orations of Isocrates. The Latin as naturally falls into Heroic; and therefore the beginning of Livy's History is half an Hexameter, and that of Tacitus an entire one. The Roman Historian describing the glorious effort of a Colonel to break thro' a Brigade of the''