John Conington

No, trust the Muse: she opes the good man's grave, And lifts him to the gods.

Death takes the mean man with the proud; The fatal urn has room for all.

Ah! Postumus! Devotion fails The lapse of gliding years to stay, With wrinkled age it nought avails Nor conjures conquering Death away.

In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away. Seize the present; trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may.

Virgil imitated Homer, but imitated him as a rival, not as a disciple.

There are few writers whose text is in so satisfactory a state as Virgil's.

Blank verse really deserving the name I believe to be impossible except to one or two eminent writers in a generation.

An inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure.

It is this principle [i.e. the interpretation of an original] which constitutes the true value of a really good translation—not as superseding the original even to the worst scholar, but as explaining it even to the best.