Aeneas thus addresses him: 'O light of Trojans and support of Troy, Thy father's champion, and thy country s joy, O long expected by thy friends, from whence Art thou returned, so late for our defence?
Do we behold thee, wearied as we are With length of labours and with toils of war?
After so many funerals of thy own, Art thou restored to thy declining town ?' This I think not an unfavourable specimen of Dryden's way of treating the solemnly pathetic passages.

Yet, surely, here is _nothing_ of the _cadence_ of the original, and little of its spirit.

The second verse is not in the original, and ought not to have been in Dryden; for it anticipates the beautiful hemistich, 'Sat patriae Priamoque datum.' By the by, there is the same sort of anticipation in a spirited and harmonious couplet preceding: 'Such as he was when by _Pelides slain_ Thessalian coursers dragged him o'er the plain.' This introduction of Pelides here is not in Virgil, because it would have prevented the effect of 'Redit exuvias indutus Achillei.' There is a striking solemnity in the answer of Pantheus to Aeneas: 'Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniae: fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, et ingens Gloria Teucrorum,' &c.
Dryden thus gives it: 'Then Pantheus, with a groan, Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town.
The fatal day, the appointed hour is come When wrathful Jove's irrevocable doom Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian hands.
The fire consumes the town, the foe commands.' My own translation runs thus; and I quote it because it occurred to my mind immediately on reading your Lordship's observations: 'Tis come, the final hour, Th' inevitable close of Dardan power Hath come! we _have_ been Trojans, Ilium _was_, And the great name of Troy; now all things pass To Argos.

So wills angry Jupiter.
Amid a burning town the Grecians domineer.' I cannot say that '_we have been_,' and 'Ilium _was_,' are as sonorous sounds as 'fuimus,' and 'fuit;' but these latter must have been as familiar to the Romans as the former to ourselves.

I should much like to know if your Lordship disapproves of my translation here.