Poetry
Eneados
Gavin Douglas · 1513
Synopsis
The twelve books of the Aeneid in Scots, plus a thirteenth added by an Italian humanist, and thirteen prologues that the translator wrote himself at the head of each. These prologues have nothing to do with Virgil: they include a Scottish winter described hour by hour, a May morning in a garden, a sleepless night, and settlings of scores with the translators who preceded him. Aeneas leaves burning Troy and seeks a land in which to found a city.
Context
The work was completed in July 1513, two months before the battle that was to carry off the king and half the nobility, and its author dated the last line himself. It was not printed until 1553, in London, thirty-one years after his death, under a title that announces thirteen books. No other poetry by him is known after that one, although he was at the height of his art. The Cambridge manuscript gives the title by which it is known.
Who it is for
A very large volume in sixteenth-century Scots, reserved for scholarly editions. One reads the prologues alone, and the seventh, the winter one, is enough to understand why the book matters.
Prizes and reception
The first time Virgil passed entire into an island language, forty years before the standard English version.