text:  We are too prone to believe that our forefathers were as rude as their speech and their speech as they; but this multitude of grammatical delicacies retained for centuries after the subjection of the native language by conquest and systematically applied in the versification of the great old poet shows a feeling of language and an authentic stamp of art that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined posterity to their not wholly unrefined more heroic ancestors