Douglas's longest, last, and in some respects most important work is his translation of the Aeneid, the first version of a great classic poet in any English dialect.
In the first, or general, prologue, Douglas claims a higher position for Virgil than for his master Chaucer, and attacks Caxton for his inadequate rendering of a French translation of the Aeneid.
The earlier part of it treated of the mythical adventures of Aeneas in Sicily, Carthage and Italy, and borrowed from the interview of Zeus and Thetis in the first book of the Iliad the idea of the interview of Jupiter and Venus; which Virgil has made one of the cardinal passages in the Aeneid.
The most famous of the Bishops was Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), translator of the Aeneid.
He was the author of an ars grammatica and commentaries on Plautus, Virgil's Aeneid and probably Horace.
