Buy this book on-line Mr. Dryden : The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals Georgics, and Aeneis
Jacob Tonson, London, c.1697
contemporary full calf with floral and foliage embossed boarder within a straight lined boarder with foliage corner pieces rebacked skillfully with dense gilt in six compartments. Title in red and black., A fine handsome copy in full contemporary calf boards. Text and Plates are clean and crisp. , Small Folio (212mm x 354), P. Frontis, Title, Dedication (1-4), biography of Virgil (5-20), Preface (21-38), names of subscribers (39-42), 23-690., Illustrated with 100 plates including frontis.
In the earlier part of his life Tonson was much associated with Dryden. Dryden’s Translation of Virgil, executed between 1693 and 1696, was published by Tonson in July 1697 by subscription. Serious financial differences arose between the poet and his publisher, and Dryden’s letters to Tonson are full of complaints of meanness and sharp practice and of refusals to accept clipped or bad money.
The Dryden translation was published in July 1697 and was favourably received. It has since been admired for its own merits of style if not for its fidelity. Bentley, as it seems from a letter to Tonson, ‘cursed it heartily’ before its publication, whether from an actal perusal does not appear. Swift speaks of it contemptuously in his dedication of the ‘Tale of a Tub’ and elsewhere refers bitterly to Dryden.
The statement is made by Johnson and Deane Swift that the hatred was caused by Dryden’s remark upon Swift’s Odes, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet’. Swift was, however, an exception to the general rule.
All the distinguished young men of letters looked up with reverence to Dryden. His ‘Virgil’ was a precedent for Pope’s ‘Homer’ which eclipsed the pecuniary results and the literary reputation of the earlier poem.
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