The Greeks for a time travelled into Egypt, but they translated no books from the Egyptian language; and when the Macedonians had overthrown the empire of Perfia, the countries that became fubject to the Grecian dominion studied only the Grecian literature. The books of the conquered nations, if they had any among them, funk in oblivion; Greece considered herself as the mistress, if not as the parent of arts, her language contained all that was supposed to be known, and, except the facred writings of the Old Testament, I know not that the library of Alexandria adopted any thing from a foreign tongue. The Romans confessed themselves the scholars of the Greeks, and do not appear to have expected, what has since happened, that the ignorance of succeeding ages would prefer them to their teachers. Every man who in Rome afpired to the praise of literature, thought it necessary to learn Greek, and had no need of versions when they could study the originals. Translation, however, was not wholly neglected. Dramatic poems could be understood by the people in no language but their own, and the Romans were sometimes entertained with the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander. Other works were fometimes attempted; in an old scholiaft there is mention of a Latin Iliad, and we have not wholly loft Tully's verfion of the poem of Aratus; but it does not appear that any man grew eminent by interpreting another, and perhaps it was more frequent to translate for exercise or amusement than for fame. The Arabs were the first nation who felt the ardour of translation: when they had fubdued the eastern provinces of the Greek empire, they found their captives wiser than themselves, and made hafte to relieve their wants by imparted knowledge. They discovered that many might grow wife by the labour of a few, and that improvements might be made with speed, when they had the knowledge of former ages in their own language. They therefore made hafte to lay hold on medicine and philosophy, and turned their chief authors into Arabic. Whether they attempted the poets is not known; their literary zeal was vehement, but it was 'hort, and probably expired before they had time to add the arts of elegance to those of neceffity. The study of ancient literature was in terrupted in Europe by the irruption of the northern nations, who subverted the Roman empire, and erected new kingdoms with new languages. It is not strange, that such confusion should suspend literary attention: those who lost, and those who gained dominion, had immediate difficulties to encounter and immediate miseries to redress, and had little leisure, amidft the violence of war, the trepidation of flight, the distresses of forced migration, or the tumults of unfettled conquest, to enquire after speculative truth, to enjoy the amufement of imaginary adventures, to know the history of former ages, or study the events of any other lives. But no sooner had this chaos of dominion sunk into order, than learning began again to flourish in the calm of peace. When life and poffeffions were secure, convenience and enjoyment were soon fought, learning was found the highest gratification of the mind, and tranflation became one of the means by which it was imparted. At last, by a concurrence of many causes, the European world was roused from its lethargy; those arts which had been long obfcurely studied in the gloom of monafteries became the general favourites of mankind; every nation vied with its neighbour for the prize of learning; the epidemical emulation spread from fouth to north, and curiosity and translation found their way to Britain. He that reviews the progress of English literature, will find that tranflation was very early cultivated among us, but that some principles, either wholly erroneous, or too far extended, hindered our fuccess from being always equal to our diligence. Chaucer, who is generally confidered as the father of our poetry, has left a verfion of Boetius on the Comforts of Philosophy, the book which seems to have been the favourite of middle ages, which had been tranflated into Saxon by king Alfred, and illustrated with a copious comment ascribed to Aquinas. It may be fuppofed that Chaucer would apply more than common attention to an author of so much celebrity, yet he has attempted nothing higher than a version strictly literal, and has degraded the poetical parts to profe, that the constraint of verfification might not obstruct his zeal for fidelity. Caxton taught us typography about the year 1490. The first book printed in English was a tranflation. Caxton was both the tranflator and printer of the Destruccion of Troye, a book which, in that infancy infancy of learning, was confidered as the best account of the fabulous ages, and which, though now driven out of notice by authors of no greater use or value, still continued to be read in Caxton's English to the beginning of the present century. Caxton proceeded as he began, and, except the poems of Gower and Chaucer, printed nothing but tranflations from the French, in which the original is so scrupuloufly followed, that they afford us little knowledge of our own language; though the words are English, the phrafe is foreign. As learning advanced, new works were adopted into our language, but I think with little improvement of the art of tranflation, though foreign nations and other languages offered us models of a better method; till in the age of Elizabeth we began to find that greater liberty was neceffary to elegance, and that elegance was neceffary to general reception; fome essays were then made upon the Italian poets, which deserve the praise and gratitude of pofterity. But the old practice was not fuddenly forfaken; Holland filled the nation with literal tranflation, and, what is yet more strange, the fame exactness was obstinately practifed in the verfions of the poets. This abfurd labour of conftruing into rhyme was countenanced by Jonfon, in his version of Horace; and, whether it be that more men have learning than genius, or that the endeavours of that time were more directed towards knowledge than delight, the accuracy of Jonfon found more imitators than the elegance of Fairfax, and May, Sandys, and Holiday, confined them felves to the toil of rendering line for line, not indeed with equal felicity, for May and Sandys were poets, and Holiday only a scholar and a critic. Feltham appears to confider it as the eftablished law of poetical tranflation, that the lines should be neither more nor fewer than those of the original; and so long had this prejudice prevailed, that Denham praises Fanthaw's version of Guarini as the example of a "new and noble way," as the firit attempt to break the boundaries of custom, and affert the natural freedom of the mufe. In the general emulation of wit and genius which the festivity of the Restoration produced, the poets shook off their conftraint, and confidered tranflation as no longer confined to servile closeness. But reformation is feldom the work of pure virtue or unassisted reason. Tranflation was improved more by accident than conviction. The writers of the foregoing age had at least learning equal to their genius, and, being often more able to explain the sentiments or illustrate the allufions of the ancients, than to exhibit their graces and transfuse their spirit, were perhaps willing fometimes to conceal their want of poetry by profufion of literature, and therefore tranflated literally, that their fidelity might shelter their infipidity or harshness. The wits of Charles's time had feldom more than flight and superficial views, and their care was to hide their want of learning behind the colours of a gay imagination; they therefore tranflated always with freedom, sometimes with licentiousness, and perhaps expected that their readers should accept sprightliness for knowledge, and confider ignorance and mistake as the impatience and negligence of a mind too rapid to stop at difficulties, and too elevated to descend to minuteness. Thus was tranflation made more easy to the writer, and more delightful to the reader; and there is no wonder if ease and pleasure have found their advocates. The paraphraftic liberties have been almost universally admitted; and Sherbourn, whose learning was eminent, and who had no need of any excuse to pass flightly over obscurities, is the only writer who, in later times, has attempted to justify or revive the ancient severity. There is undoubtedly a mean to be observed. Dryden saw very early that closeness best preserved an author's sense, and that freedom best exhibited his spirit; he therefore will deserve the highest praise who can give a representation at once faithful and pleasing, who can convey the fame thoughts with the same graces, and who, when he translates, changes nothing but the language. Idler. $96. What Talents are requifite to form a good Translator. After all, a translator is to make his author appear as charming as possibly hẹ can, provided he maintains his character, and makes him not unlike himself. Tranflation is a kind of drawing after the life; where every one will acknowledge there is a double fort of likeness, a good one and a bad. 'Tis one thing to draw the outlines true, the features like, the proportions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these grace3F4 fal, ful, by the posture, the shadowings, and thor's sense in good English, in poetical ... ..: Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenour; perpetually clofing his sense at the end of a verse, and verse commonly which they call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives, with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace. Ovid, with all his sweetness, has as little variety of numbers and found as he he is always, as it were, upon the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet-ground. He avoids, like the other, all synalæphas, or cutting off one vowel when it comes before another, in the following word. But to return to Virgil: though he is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting it, that he seems rather to disdain it; frequently makes use of synalæphas; and concludes his sense in the middle of his verse. He is every where above conceits of epigrammatic wit, and gross hyperboles: he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. I drew my definition of poetical wit from my particular confideration of him: for propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him; and where they are proper, they will be delightful. Pleasure follows of neceffity, as the effect does the cause; and therefore is not to be put into the definition. This exact propriety of Virgil I particularly regarded as a great part of his character; but must confess to my shame, that I have not been able to tranflate any part of him so well, as to make him appear wholly like himself: for where the original is close, no version can reach it in the same compass. Hannibal Caro's, in the Italian, is the nearest, the most poetical, and the most sonorous of any tranflation of the Æneid: yet, though he takes the advantage of blank verse, he commonly allows two lines for one of Virgil, and does not always hit his sense. Tasso tells us, in his letters, that Sperone Speroni, a great his character; and to tranflate him line for line is impossible, because the Latin is naturally a more succinct language than either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its monosyllables, is far the most compendious of them. Virgil is much the closest of any Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter has more feet than the English heroic. Dryden. § 97. The Nature of Wit in Writing. The compofition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in poetry, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without a metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Wit written is that which is well defined, the happy refult of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem; I judge it chiefly to confift in the delightful imagina. tion of perfons, actions, paffions, or things. 'Tis not the jerk or fting of an epigram, nor the feeming contradiction of a poor antithesis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme) nor the jingle of a more poor paranomafia; neither is it so much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of speech that it fets before your eyes the absent object as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. So then the firit happiness of a poet's imagination, is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, drefsing or moulding of that thought, as the judgment represents it, proper to the sub Italian wit, who was his contemporary, object; the third is elocution, or the art of served of Virgil and Tully, that the Latin orator endeavoured to imitate the copioufness of Homer, the Greek poet; and that the Latin poet made it his business to reach the conciseness of Demofthenes, the Greek - orator. Virgil therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and leaving so much to be imagined by the reader, can never be translated as he ought, in any modern tongue. To make him copious is to alter cloathing and adorning that thought, so found and varied in apt, significant, and sounding words: the quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and accuracy in the expression. For the first of these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or : H the battle of the bulls, the labour of the bees, and those many other excellent images of nature, most of which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament to bear them up; but the words wherewith he describes them are fo excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was said by Ovid, Materiam fuperabat opus: the very found of his words has often somewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him, we fit, as in a play, beholding the scenes of what he represents. To perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change the nature of a known word, by applying it to fome other fignification: and this is it which Horace means in his epistle to the Pifos : or extremely discomposed by one. His of Virgil! We see the objects he presents - Totamque infufa per artus Dixeris egregiè notum si callida verbum without raifing Images. Dryden. I find it very hard to perfuade several that their passions are affected by words from whence they have no ideas; and yet harder to convince them, that in the ordinary course of conversation we are sufficiently understood without raising any images of the things concerning which we fpeak. It seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he has ideas in his mind or not. Of this at first view, every man, in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have of things, or whether we have any ideas at all upon fome subjects. It even requires some attention to be thoroughly fatisfied on this head. Since I wrote thefe papers I found two very striking inftances of the poffibility there is that a man may hear words without having any idea of the things which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning them to We behold him embellishing his images, others, combined in a new way, and with as he makes Venus breathing beauty upon - lumenque juventæ See his tempeft, his funeral sports, his com- great propriety, energy, and inftruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect fight can describe visual objects with more fpirit and justness than this blind man, which cannot possibly be owing to his having a clearer conception of the things he describes than is common to other perfons. Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he |