Quote#Poetry
Blank verse really deserving the name I believe to be impossible…
Quote byJohn Conington · 1825–1869
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Preface to The Aeneid of Virgil, Translated into English Verse by John Conington (1866), p. ix.
English (original)
Blank verse really deserving the name I believe to be impossible except to one or two eminent writers in a generation.
— John Conington
More from John Conington
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.
There are few writers whose text is in so satisfactory a state as Virgil's.
Fear proves a base-born soul.
Huge, awful, hideous, ghastly, blind.
An inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure.
Virgil imitated Homer, but imitated him as a rival, not as a disciple.