Read it through once

In August, 1802—she would then be fifteen years of age—she writes to her father: “I told you that I had finished the _Iliad_, which I admired beyond anything I ever read. I have now begun the _Æneid_, which I cannot say I admire so much. Dryden is so fond of triplets and alexandrines, that it is much heavier reading; and though he is reckoned a more harmonious versifier than Pope, some of his lines are so careless that I shall not be sorry when I have finished it. I shall then read the _Odyssey_. I have already gone through three books, and shall finish it in a fortnight ... I am now reading that beautiful opera of Metastasio, _Themistocles_; and when I have finished that, I shall read Tasso’s _Jerusalem Delivered_. How you would dote on Metastasio; his poetry is really heavenly,” a letter which, apart from the excusable conventional school-girl gush of its closing words, is not only remarkable for its style, but for its display of a critical faculty really astounding in a girl of fifteen.