s upon one great literary task, the
translation of Virgil. This weighty and important undertaking was
probably suggested by the experience of Tonson, the success of whose
"Miscellanies" had taught him the value placed by the public on Dryden's
translations from the classics. From hints thrown out by contemporary
scheme was meditated, even before 1964; but in that year the poet, in a
letter to Dennis, speaks of it as under his immediate contemplation. The
names of Virgil and Dryden were talismans powerful to arrest the eyes of
all that were literary in England, upon the progress of the work. Mr.
Malone has recorded the following particulars concerning it, with pious
enthusiasm.

"Dr. Johnson has justly remarked, that the nation seemed to consider its
honour interested in the event. Mr. Gilbert Dolben gave him the various
editions of his author: Dr. Knightly Chetwood furnished him with the
life of Virgil, and the Preface to the Pastorals; and Addison supplied
the arguments of the several books, and an Essay on the Georgics. The
first lines of this great poet which he translated, he wrote with a
diamond on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton House, in
Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Driden,
Esq.[10] The version of the first Georgic, and a great part of the last
Aeneid, was made at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir
William Bowyer, Baronet; and the seventh AEneid was translated at
Burleigh, the noble mansion of the Earl of Exeter. These circumstances,
which must be acknowledged to be of no great importance, I yet have
thought it proper to record, because they will for ever endear those
places to the votaries of the Muses, and add to them a kind of
celebrity, which neither the beauties of nature, nor the exertions of
art, can bestow."

Neither was the liberality of the nation entirely disproportioned to the
general importance attached to the translation of Virgil, by so eminent
a poet. The researches of Mr. Malone have ascertained, in some degree,
the terms. There were two classes of subscribers, the first set of whom
paid five guineas apiece to adorn the work with engravings; beneath each
of which, in due and grateful remembrance, was blazoned the arms of a
subscriber: this class amounted to one hundred and one persons, a list
of whom appears in this edition, in vol. xiii., and presents an
assemblage of noble names, few of whom are distinguished more to their