Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax
and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not baulk them. When I had
compassed them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth
book (which is the masterpiece of the whole _Metamorphoses_), that I
enjoined myself the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And
now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into
a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some
beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the
_Hunting of the Boar_, _Cinyras and Myrrha_, the good-natured story
of _Baucis and Philemon_, with the rest, which I hope I have translated
closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had
in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent
of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious
and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age, if I may
properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this
concluding century.
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