"The translation from Horace might, indeed, be termed the “version of the forty triumphs,” because there are at least that many prosodical marvels. The unrhymed lines that lap over like waves of music; the delicate beauty of the half-revealed assonance that takes the place of rhyme; the inverted stresses that afford a faint but perceptible trace of antique choriambic rhythm; the admirable spondees of...the stanza itself, Horatian and yet seemingly native English; the apt diction of melancholy—these are some of the treasures of this little poem. It is hardly too much to say that if by chance the rest of Milton's work had been lost, this translation would suffice to prove that he had been a great artist. Nowhere else in such brief compass is the evidence concerning what our literature gained from a study of the classic ode so impressively assembled."