Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or a poet?"[107] Chapter V The Middle Ages 1.

That Virgil is a great poet I know from his poems; but that he was the greatest of the Augustan age, I must learn from Quinctilian and others.

Virgil the Geometer, i.e., Fergil (O'Farrell), was Abbot of Aghaboe, went to the continent in 741, and was afterwards Bishop of Salzburg.

Virgil was the better artist, Homer was the greater genius.

She was honest to her heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is looked upon as a baggage.

" The deputation respectfully represented that although Virgil was no doubt Mantua's greatest citizen, he laboured under the disqualification of having been dead more than twelve hundred years.

Mr. Pope in his preface to Homer says, if Dryden had lived to finish what he began of Homer, he, (Mr. Pope) would not have attempted it after him, 'No more, says he, than I would his Virgil, his version of whom (notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited translation I know in any language.'

Virgil was Dante's poetic master and is described as conducting him through the realms depicted in the Divina Commedia.

Parts of Virgil he does not translate well; he has no sympathy with Maro's elegance, concinnitas, chaste grandeur, and minute knowledge of nature; but wherever Virgil begins to glow and gallop, Dryden glows and gallops with him; and wherever Virgil is nearest Homer, Dryden is nearest him.

CIBBER (Colley), in his Love Makes a Man, i., makes Carlos the student say, "For the cure of herds [Virgil's] bucolicks are a master-piece; but when his art describes the commonwealth of bees ...

Had Virgil been a good Roman, the Aeneid might have been what no doubt Augustus, and Rome generally, desired, a political epic.

Virgil is the most scrupulous in this respect; and towards the inevitable change, which Milton completed and perfected from Camoens and Tasso, Virgil took a great step in making Jupiter professedly almighty.

Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.