This study-referred to as a preface-is given this designation because its basic aim is not to offer an up-to-date overall assessment of Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, but rather to provide a relevant basis for such an assessment-thus allowing for a wide range of readership. The relevance of this approach rests on two basic premises that of R.A. Brower who maintains that no translation can be understood or properly evaluated apart from the conditions of expression under which it was made(Alexander Pope The Poetry of Allusion [London, 1968], p. 98), supported by Dryden’s expressed intention to make Virgil speak such English, as he wou’d himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age(Dedication of the rneis), together providing a genuinely relevant basis for an understanding of Dryden’s translation, the conditions of expression here allowing the inclusion of all the possible implications that this phrase includes.