tifully expressed, so adorned with examples, and so admirably raised by the prosopopeia of Nature, who is brought in speaking to her children with so much authority and vigour, deserve the pains I have taken with them, which I hope have not been unsuccessful, or unworthy of my author: at least I must take the liberty to own, that I was pleased with my own endeavours, which but rarely happens to me, and that I am not dissatisfied upon the review of any thing I have done in this author.

It is true, there is something, and that of some moinent, to be objected against my englishing the Nature of Love, from the fourth book of Lucretius: and I can less easily answer why I translated it, than why I thus translated it. The objection arises from the obscenity of the subject; which is aggravated by the too lively and alluring delicacy of the verses. In the first place, without the least formality of an excuse, I own it pleased me: and let my enemics make the worst they can of this confession. I am not yet so secure from that passion, but that I want my author's antidotes against it. He has given the truest and most philosophical account both of the disease and remedy, which I ever found in any author: for which reasons I translated him. But it will be asked why I turned him into this luscious English, for I will not give it a worse word. Instead of an answer, I would ask again of my supercilious adversaries, whether I am not bound when I translate an author, to do him all the right I can, and to translate him to the best advantage?

If, to mince his meaning, which I am satisfied was
honest and instructive, I had either omitted some
part of what he said, or taken from the strength of
his expression, I certainly had wronged him; and
that freeness of thought and words being thus
cashiered in my hands, he had no longer been
Lucretius. If nothing of this kind be to be read,
physicians must not study nature, anatomies must
not be seen; and somewhat I could say of particular
passages in books which, to avoid prophaneness, I
do not name: but the intention qualifies the act;
and both mine and my author's were to instruct as
well as please. It is most certain that barefaced
bawdry is the poorest pretence to wit imaginable.
If I should say otherwise, I should have two great
authorities against me: the one is the ESSAY ON
POETRY," which I publickly valued before I knew
the author of it, and with the commendation of
which my Lord Roscommon so happily begins his
Essay on Translated Verse: the other is no less
than our admired Cowley; who says the same

"The Earl of Mulgrave's ESSAY ON POETRY, he tells us himself was written in 1676 b, according to Antony Wood, was not printed till 1682. Probably, according to the fashion of that time, it was shewn about in manuscript, soon after it was written, and without the author's name, who was then but twenty-seven years old. In 1676 Dryden dedicated his AURENGZEBE to this nobleman.

thing in other words; for in his Ode concerning Wit, he writes thus of it:

"Much less can that have any place,
"At which a virgin hides her face:

"Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just
"The author blush, there, where the reader must."

Here indeed Mr. Cowley goes farther than the Essay; for he asserts plainly that obscenity has no place in wit; the other only says, it is a poor pretence to it, or an ill sort of wit, which has nothing more to support it than barefaced ribaldry; which is both unmannerly in itself, and fulsome to the reader. But neither of these will reach my case for in the first place, I am only the translator, not the inventor; so that the heaviest part of the censure falls upon Lucretius, before it reaches me in the next place, neither he nor I have used the grossest words, but the cleanliest metaphors we could find, to palliate the broadness of the meaning; and, to conclude, have carried the poetical part no farther than the philosophical

Ne exacted. There is one mistake of mine which I will not lay to the printer's charge, who has enough Par. to answer for, in false pointings: it is in the word, viper: I would have the verse run thus,

The scorpion, love, must on the wound be bruis'd.

There are a sort of blundering half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a

verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism:

non ego paucis

Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,

Aut humana parùm cavit natura.

True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge. It is a sign that malice is hard driven, when it is forced to lay hold on a word or syllable: to arraign a man is one thing, and to cavil at him is another. In the midst of an ill-natured generation of scribblers, there is always justice enough left in mankind, to protect good writers: and they too are obliged, both by humanity and interest, to espouse each other's cause, against false criticks, who are the common enemies. This last consideration puts me in mind of what I owe to the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius." I have not here designed to rob him of any part of that commendation, which he has so justly acquired by the whole author, whose fragments only fall to my portion. What I have now performed, is no more than I intended above twenty years ago. The ways of our translation are very different; he follows him more closely than I have done; which

Thomas Creech, whom our author has addressed some encomiastick, verses prefixed to the second edition of his translation of Lucretius, which was published in1683.

who highly nspected bryder, Seethe

It has had Dedication
t of his translation of Horace
1684".

became an interpreter of the whole poem. I take more liberty, because it best suited with my design, which was to make him as pleasing as I could. He had been too voluminous, had he used my method in so long a work; and I had certainly taken his, had I made it my business to translate the whole. The preference then is justly his; and I join with Mr. Evelyn in the confession of it, with this additional advantage to him; that his reputation is already established in this poet, mine is to make its fortune in the world. If I have been any where obscure, in following our common author, or if Lucretius himself is to be condemned, I refer myself to his excellent Annotations, which I have often read, and always with some new pleasure.

My preface begins already to swell upon me, and looks as if I were afraid of my reader, by so tedious a bespeaking of him; and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands; but the Greek gentleman shall quickly be dispatched, because I have more business with the Roman.

That which distinguishes Theocritus from all other poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues, is the inimitable tenderness of his passions, and the natural expression of them in words so becoming

8 This surely is a high strain of courtesy. Creech was now but twenty-four years old, and had only been known as a poet for about the same number of months.-Our author, however, may have meant, not to speak generally, but only to say-my reputation in this poet is to make its fortune in the world.