A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer

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.

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

Fear proves a base-born soul.

Huge, awful, hideous, ghastly, blind.

An inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure.

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