"Virgil seems to have copied Greek models completely, imitating them slavishly and lifelessly, and so they appear as plagiarisms more or less devoid of spirit."

"Virgil's style is an inimitable mixture of the elaborately ornate, and the majestically plain and touching."

"That harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow."

"[The] pathetic is Virgil's great excellence in the Æneid, and...in that way he surpasses all other poets of every age and nation, except, perhaps (and only perhaps), Shakspeare. It is on that account that I rank him so very high; for surely to excel in that style which speaks to the heart is the greatest of all excellence."

"The principal and distinguishing excellency of Virgil, and which, in my opinion, he possesses beyond all poets, is tenderness. Nature had endowed him with exquisite sensibility; he felt every affecting circumstance in the scenes he describes; and, by a single stroke, he knows how to reach the heart."

"I have this year read all Virgil through. I read a book of the Æneid every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and I had a great delight in it. The Georgicks did not give me so much pleasure, except the fourth book. The Eclogues I have almost all by heart."

"Savez-vous le latin, madame? Non; voilà pourquoi vous me demandez si j'aime mieux Pope que Virgile. Ah! madame, toutes nos langues modernes sont sèches, pauvres, et sans harmonie, en comparaison de celles qu'ont parlées nos premiers maîtres, les Grecs et les Romains. Nous ne sommes que des violons de village. Comment voulez-vous d’ailleurs que je compare des épîtres à un poëme épique, aux amours de Didon, à l'embrasement de Troie, à la descente d'Énée aux enfers? Je crois lEssai sur l'Homme, de Pope, le premier des poëmes didactiques, des poëmes philosophiques; mais ne mettons rien à côté de Virgile. Vous le connaissez par les traductions; mais les poëtes ne se traduisent point. Peut-on traduire de la musique? Je vous plains, madame, avec le goût et la sensibilité éclairée que vous avez, de ne pouvoir lire Virgile."

"The warmest admirers of the great Mantuan poet can extol him for little more than the skill with which he has, by making his hero both a traveller and a warrior, united the beauties of the Iliad and Odyssey in one composition; yet his judgment was perhaps sometimes overborne by his avarice of the Homeric treasures; and, for fear of suffering a sparkling ornament to be lost, he has inserted it where it cannot shine with its original splendor."

"Virgil loved rural ease, and, far from harm, Maecenas fix'd him in a neat, snug farm, Where he might free from trouble pass his days In his own way, and pay his rent in praise."

"The delight of all ages, and the pattern of all poets."

"This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant."

"When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work to outlast immortal Rome designed, Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw: But when to examine every part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design, And rules as strict his laboured work confine, As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line."

"I came home a little later than usual the other night; and, not finding myself inclined to sleep, I took up Virgil, to divert me till I should be more disposed to rest. He is the author whom I always choose on such occasions; no one writing in so divine, so harmonious, nor so equal a strain, which leaves the mind composed and softened into an agreeable melancholy; the temper in which, of all others, I choose to close the day."

"Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words."

"It long has been this sacred author's fate, To lie at ev'ry dull translator's will: Long, long his muse has groan'd beneath the weight Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill."

"Virgil, above all poets, had a stock, which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words."

"Virgil cannot be said to copy Homer; the Grecian had only the advantage of writing first."

"Virgil has a thousand secret beauties..."

"[Homer's] Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence … Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame ..."

"Virgil is so exact in every word, that none can be changed but for a worse; nor any one removed from its place, but the harmony will be altered. He pretends sometimes to trip; but it is only to make you think him in danger of a fall, when he is most secure."

"Virgil had the gift of expressing much in little, and sometimes in silence..."

"There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation."

"He seems to have studied not to be translated."

"I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable."

"Hail mighty Maro! may that sacred name Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame; Sublime ideas and apt words infuse, The Muse instruct my voice, and thou inspire the Muse!"

"Next, Virgil I’ll call forth To pledge this second health In wine, whose each cup’s worth An Indian commonwealth."

"The chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of man is known."

"And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, That it shall gather strength of life, with being, And live hereafter more admired than now."

"Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit: not a simile he hath but is Homer's; not an invention, person, or disposition but is wholly or originally built upon Homerical foundations, and in many places hath the very words Homer useth."

"...exemplum, regula, principium, finis esse debet nobis Maro."

"Nothing in short was omitted by that godlike man. Only fools would want to add anything; only insolent men to change anything. Sentences, numbers, figures, simplicity, candor, ornaments, nature, art, learning—all is incomparable, or, in a word—Virgilian. ... Let the cravens who contend that the free genius and taste of divine Virgil were prisoners of Homer's inventions hold their peace. It was not thus. The arguments of Homer which nature proposed to him were corrected by Virgil as a schoolboy's theme by his professor."

"Quem te, inquit, reddidissem, Si te vivum invenissem, Poetarum maxime!"

"For thou shalt, by thyn owene experience, Konne in a chayer rede of this sentence Bet than Virgile, while he was on lyve."

"Ma Virgilio n'avea lasciati scemi di sé, Virgilio, dolcissimo patre, Virgilio a cui per mia salute die'mi."

"O gloria di Latin, disse, per cui mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra..."

"Tu duca, tu signore e tu maestro."

"O anima cortese mantoana Di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, E durera quanto 'l moto lontana."

"O de li altri poeti onore e lume, vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume.'Tu se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore, tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore."

"Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?"

"Divinus poeta noster."

"Nempe apud Vergilium, quem propterea paruuli legunt, ut uidelicet poeta magnus omniumque praeclarissimus atque optimus teneris ebibitus animis non facile obliuione possit aboleri..."

"Καὶ φίλος Αὐσονίοισι λιγύθροος ἔπρεπε κύκνος πνείων εὐεπίης Βεργίλλιος, ὅν ποτε Ῥώμης Θυμβριὰς ἄλλον Ὅμηρον ἀνέτρεφε πάτριος Ηχώ."

"Intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus."

"Decem Rhetorum, qui apud Athenas Atticas floruerunt, stylos inter se diversos hunc unum permiscuisse."

"Facundia Mantuani multiplex et multiformis est et dicendi genus omne complectitur."

"Plato of Poets."

""Bucolica" triennio, "Georgica" VII, "Aeneida" XI perfecit annis."

"Corpore et statura fuit grandi, aquilo colore, facie rusticana, valetudine varia; nam plerumque a stomacho et a faucibus ac dolore capitis laborabat, sanguinem etiam saepe reiecit. Cibi vinique minimi; libidinis in pueros pronioris... Vulgatum est consuesse eum et cum Plotia Hieria. ... Cetera sane vitae et ore et animo tam probum constat, ut Neapoli Parthenias vulgo appellatus sit, ac si quando Romae, quo rarissime commeabat, viseretur in publico, sectantis demonstrantisque se subterfugeret in proximum tectum."

"Vtar enim verbis isdem quae ex Afro Domitio iuvenis excepi, qui mihi interroganti quem Homero crederet maxime accedere "secundus" inquit "est Vergilius, propior tamen primo quam tertio". Et hercule ut illi naturae caelesti atque inmortali cesserimus, ita curae et diligentiae vel ideo in hoc plus est, quod ei fuit magis laborandum, et quantum eminentibus vincimur, fortasse aequalitate pensamus. Ceteri omnes longe sequentur."

"Ideoque optime institutum est ut ab Homero atque Vergilio lectio inciperet, quamquam ad intellegendas eorum virtutes firmiore iudicio opus est: sed huic rei superest tempus, neque enim semel legentur."