He chose to please the most judicious--souls of the highest rank, and truest understanding. These are few in number; but whoever is so happy as to gain their approbation, can never lose it, because they never give it blindly. Then they have a certain magnetism in their judgment, which attracts others to their sense. Every day they gain some new proselyte, and in time become the church. For this reason, a well-weighed judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the reader: the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him; every time he takes it up, he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas poems, which are produced by the vigour of imagination only, have a gloss upon them at the first, which time wears off; the works of judgment are like the diamond; the more they are polished, the more lustre they receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's Æneïs and Marini's Adone. And, if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say, that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes: _Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo_. Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree, according to my motto in the title-page--_Sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis_: and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like that of the peers, of which your lordship is so great an ornament. Without this ambition, which I own, of desiring to please the _judices natos_, I could never have been able to have done any thing at this age, when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men. Yet Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement: when he was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him. And we find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour--_nec dona moror_: for Dampier has informed us, in his voyages, that the air of the country which produces gold, is never wholesome. I had long since considered, that the way to please the best judges is not to translate a poet literally, and Virgil least of any other: for, his peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by the narrow compass of our heroic verse, unless I would make use of monosyllables only, and those clogged with consonants, which are the dead weight of our mother-tongue. It is possible, I confess, though it rarely happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some examples of it I have seen. My first line of the Æneïs is not harsh-- Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by fate, &c. But a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius, made English by our learned and judicious Mr Creech-- Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame--