“Qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras”: “To match the whiteness of the snow, The swiftness of the breeze”; or Corœbus’ appeal to his comrades in book ii.: “Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?” “Who questions, when with foes we deal, If craft or courage guides the steel?” Have we not here all needful fidelity united to the air of genuine poetry? Compare Mr. Cranch’s versions of the first and last of these examples: “The only safety of the vanquished is To hope for none”; and “Whether we make use Of stratagem or valor who inquires In dealing with an enemy?” If Æneas and Corœbus had harangued their fellow-Trojans in this wise, we doubt if they would have helped them so gallantly to make some of the finest poetry in the _Æneid_. There is no trumpet in such lines as these. Nevertheless, in spite of many suspicious flavors of prose in his version, Mr. Cranch, we suppose, is to be called a poet. The Boston muses are liberal to their votaries, and do not ask that a man shall be Shakspere or Milton before crowning him with all their laurels. At least, we may fairly say that he is a gentleman of accomplishments and—we should be tempted to add culture, the proper term, we believe, for a person “in society” who knows all the things that are proper for “persons in society” to know, were it not that glib dilettanteism and newspaper sciolists have well-nigh sent that much-abused word into the Coventry of cant. Mr. Cranch is, moreover, a writer of much poetic taste and no little poetic faculty, as he has shown in many pleasant essays in many varieties of metre. Among the kinds of metre which he can write, however, his version of the _Æneid_ has not convinced us that blank-verse is included; or, to put it more agreeably, if not more justly, we are not persuaded that the kind of blank-verse he writes is best fitted to do justice to Virgil.