It is this principle [i.e. the interpretation of an original] which constitutes the true value of a really good translation—not as superseding the original even to the worst scholar, but as explaining it even to the best.

"The Academical Study of Latin", address delivered by Professor Conington in the Theatre, Oxford, December 2, 1854, as his inaugural lecture, as published and reported in Miscellaneous Writings of John Conington, ed. J. A. Symonds, Vol. I (1872), p. 208, and as quoted in The Aeneid of Virgil in Blank Verse by William J. Thornhill, Preface, p. vii