England has once, and only once, produced a poet so entirely imbued with the Roman spirit that Latin seemed to come to him like the language of some prior state of existence, rather remembered than learned.

Landor's Latin verse is hence greatly superior to Milton's, not, perhaps, in scholarly elegance, but in absolute vitality.

It would be poor praise to commend it for fidelity to the antique, for it is the antique.

Milton stands at the head of the numerous class who, not being actually born Romans, have all but made themselves so.

"With a great sum obtained I this freedom." His Latin compositions are delightful, but precisely from the qualities least characteristic of his genius as an English poet.