In the light of such illustration, it is not surprising that Trapp, in the Preface, when he wishes to give the feel of the Virgilian sublime, quotes Milton's description of the creation: Let there be Light, said God; and forthwith Light Ethereal, first of Things, Quintessence pure, Sprang from the Deep. (p. xxx) When he wants to show what grandeur with propriety the English language can achieve (even in the teeth of Dryden's rendering of Virgil, which he pertinently censures), he chooses his prime examples from Milton: witness the account of Satan "Hurl'd headlong, flaming from th' ethereal Sky...." It was a bold undertaking by Trapp, for Pope's version of Homer, elegantly correct in couplets, was in the press. Many a man was to suffer more in _The Dunciad_ for less.[4] Trapp's immediate critical associates in England clearly are John Dennis and Joseph Addison, and the origins of Trapp's thinking in classical antiquity may be found in Longinus. Dennis had united Milton with the poets of antiquity as an example of the passionate effects of the religious sublime,[5] while Addison (who had already translated a fragment of _Aeneid_ III into blank verse) in his _Spectator_ papers on _Paradise Lost_ had tastefully combined the structural formalism of Aristotelian criticism of the epic with enthusiastic comment on the grandeur and beauty of Milton's verse. To these must be added Trapp's favorite, Roscommon, who in _An Essay on Translated Verse_ (1685)[6] had interposed an imitation of Milton to illustrate how English verses might rise to Roman greatness. But it would be unfair to Trapp merely to reduce him to a series of component sources. He adopts and adapts; and as far as the criticism of Virgil was concerned, his Preface and his notes are a refreshing plea for something that he felt had not been sufficiently emphasized in the _Aeneid_: the ever-varying energetic passion that Longinian criticism had claimed was an essential quality of the greatest literary works. Trapp's choice of Miltonic example is only one means by which he emphasises that to truly respond to the _Aeneid_ (as to any major poem) was to be ravished by an overwhelming emotive experience. "The Art, and Triumph of Poetry are in nothing more seen, and felt, than in _Moving the Passions_," he comments in his "Remarks" on the tragical action of the fourth book to which he prefaced "_An Essay upon the Nature, and Art of_ Moving the Passions _in Tragedy, and Epic Poetry_" (I. 377). "A Man cannot command his own Motions, while he reads This; The very _Verses are alive_" (II. 942) is a typical comment from his "Remarks" (on breaking the truce in the twelfth book). He introduces the third book by citing Horace: the poet's art is like magic, transporting us now to Thebes, now to Athens (I. 365). Sometimes he throws up his hands in rapture at the _je ne sais quoi_: "Some Beauties are the more so, for not being capable of Explanation. I feel