—F. Q., III., ix., 41.
and—
“Like a great water-flood, that, tombling low
From the high mountaines, threates to overflow
With suddein fury all the fertile playne,
And the sad husbandmans long hope doth throw
Adown the streame, and all his vowes make vayne,
Nor bounds nor banks his headlong ruine may sustayne.”
—F. Q., II., xi., 18; cf. Æn. II., 304 ff.
Bacon calls Virgil “the chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of man is known.” “Milton,” writes Dryden, “has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.” But beside this indirect influence, and that through the Italian school, Virgil’s direct influence on Milton is attested by many an allusion. Dryden, Cowper, with his “sweet Maro’s matchless strain,” Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, with his “sweet, tender Virgil,” freely acknowledge the debt they owe our poet. Dryden and Morris translated the Æneid into verse.