Virgil quotes

Wordsworth says somewhere that wherever Virgil seems to have composed 'with his eye on the object', Dryden fails to render him. Homer invariably composes 'with his eye onthe object', whether the object be moral or a material one: Pope composes with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whatever it is.

- Matthew Arnold
On Translating Homer, lecture1.

Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

-John Dryden
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.

-John Dryden
  'The  Author's  Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic Licence', an essay prefacing State of Innocence, a libretto based on Paradise Lost.

O Virgile! o"   poe'  te! o"   mon ma|"tre divin! OhVirgil! Oh poet! Oh my divine master!

-Victor Marie Hugo
' 1837  Les Voix inte  rieures, no.7,'A  Virgile'.