...withal the highest pattern of human life'.2 Elsewhere he is even more enthusiastic: 'A HEROIC POEM ... is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform.'3 Such pronouncements are typical of English neoclassicism, and they appear even more radical...

...The English Virgil Taylor Corse Dryden's Aeneid The English Virgil TAYLOR CORSE "A heroick Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform." So begins the lengthy essay that John Dryden attached to his translation in 1697 of Virgil's great...

...poetry, reiterating the views of a lifetime. There he repeated the commonplace notion that epic was "the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform," and that Homer and Virgil were the two principal models, indeed the two greatest poets of all time....

...writers of conservative and classicising allegiance like Swift and Pope, at a time when the old view that 'A heroic poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform''44 was becoming 1ncreasingly difficult to square with anxieties about the morality of 'Warrs,...

...such as epic, with all objects subordinated to that objective. Dryden's Dedication begins: A Heroick Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest Work...perform. The Design of it, is to form the Mind to Heroick Virtue by Example; 'tis convey'd in Verse, that it may delight, while it instructs. . . . Even...

...history or tradition.' In short, the Heroic Poem, of which Dryden in his Dedication to the Aeneid says, 'The design of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example. ... the action of it is always one, entire and great.' Whatever Pound's intentions are, this is far...

...the ancient poems of Homer and Virgil were the best of their kind. "A heroick Poem," he repeated now, "is undoubtedly the greatest Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform." It easily surpassed tragedy in depth and effect. u' To be sure, Dryden had said as much even when he...

...and the most instructive way of writing. Similarly, the Dedication of the Aeneis begins as follows: 'A Heroic Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform."34 Regarding the other issue, viz. the status of the mixed genres, Dryden's views have changed...

...all the Precepts of this Art." By 1718 Joseph Trapp quoted Dryden quoting Rapin and agreed that "An Heroic Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest...Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform. " John Ozell thus was commonplace when in 1712 he said of Homer: "by the Unanimous Consent of all Men,...

...is, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, a philosophical principle, not an aesthetic one. A heroic epic is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform. But not only are the Odyssey, Illiad, Aeneid, Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, and Paradise Lost examples...