Pièce 99 - Letter from Robin Mayor to R. C. Trevelyan

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26 Addison Avenue, London. - Returns "Windfalls"; should have done so earlier, but has kept it till he had 'time to read and digest' Bob's [translation of Virgil's] "Eclogues" and "Georgics". Thinks them both very good: any doubts he had about the 'long metre' Bob used for the "Eclogues" 'quite disappeared', and thinks he was right to use blank verse for the "Georgics" 'with its more deliberate and continuous movement'; had not fully realised before how differently Virgil uses the hexameter in the two works. Thinks Bob has been 'surprisingly successful' in capturing both the 'almost prosaic manner' of much of the Georgics without being 'pompous or over-poetical', while doing justice to 'the high poetic quality of the great passages'. Felt something occasionally lacking in his version of Virgil's 'sudden transitions from one level to another', but suspects no translation can capture fully the 'sudden beauties'. Enjoyed "Windfalls" too and could say much about it, but will not 'spin this letter out any longer'.