ing itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these graceful, by the posture, the shadowings, and chiefly by the spirit which animates the whole. I cannot without some indignation look on an ill copy of an excellent original: much less can I behold with patience Virgil, Homer, and some others, whose beauties I have been endeavouring all my life to imitate, so abused, as I may say, to their faces by a botching interpreter. What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or Latin, will believe me or any other man, when we commend those authors, and confess we derive all that is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they take those to be the same poets, whom our Oglebies have translated? But I dare assure them, that a good poet is no more like himself, in a dull translation, than his carcase would be to his living body. There are many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother tongue. The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few it is impossible even for a good wit to understand and practise them without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and in short, without wearing off the rust which he contracted, while he was laying in a stock of learning. Thus difficult it is to understand the purity of English, and critically to discern

from that which is

And for want of all

not only good writers from bad, and a proper style, from a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure in a good author, vicious and corrupt in him. these requisites, or the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young men take up some criedup English poet for their model; adore him, and imitate him, as they think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is boyish and trifling, wherein either his thoughts are improper to his subject, or his expressions unworthy of his thoughts, or the turn of both is unharmonious.

Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a nice critick in his mother tongue, before he attempts to translate in a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style, but he must be a master of them too: he must perfectly understand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own so that to be a thorough translator, he must be a thorough poet. Neither is it enough, to give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers; for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, there yet remains an harder task; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it; that is, the maintaining the character of an author, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes bim appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts,

8

but the style and versification of Virgil and Ovid, are very different: yet I see, even in our best poets, who have translated some parts of them, that they have confounded their several talents; and by endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so much alike, that if I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the copies, which was Virgil, and which was Ovid. It was objected against a late noble painter, that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were like. And this happened to him, because he always studied himself, more than those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another. Suppose two authors are equally sweet; yet there is as great distinction to be made in sweetness, as in that of sugar, and that of honey. I can make the difference more plain, by giving you (if it be worth knowing) my own method of proceeding, in my translations out of four several poets in this volume; Virgil, Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace. In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered the genius and distinguishing character of my author. I looked on Virgil, as a succinct and grave majestick writer; one who weighed not only every thought,

* Sir Peter Lely. He was born at Soest, in Westphalia, in 1617; came into England in the year 1641, and died of an apoplexy, as he was drawing the portrait of the Duchess of Somerset, November 30, 1680.

but every word and syllable; who was still aiming to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly he could; for which reason he is so very figurative, that he requires (I may almost say) a grammar apart to construe him. His verse is every where sounding the very thing in your ears, whose sense it bears yet the numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the delight of the reader; so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together. On the contrary, Ovid and Claudian, though they write in styles different from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of musick in their verses. All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenour; perpetually closing his sense at the end of a verse, and that 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 sound 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 synalephas, or cutting off one vowel, when it comes before another in the following word; so that minding only smoothness, he wants both variety and majesty.—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 synalephas, and concludes his sense in the middle

of his verse. He is every where above conceits of epigrammatick 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 consideration 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 necessity, 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 translate any part of him so well, as to make him appear wholly like himself. For where the original is close, no version can

*

9 Here, for the first time, it is observable that our author has restrained and qualified his notion of wit, by adding the word poetical to it; and if he had done so in the former passages, where he has introduced the same topick, (see vol. i. p. 412, and vol. ii. p. 151,) his definition of wit, would, perhaps, have been less exceptionable. It is clear, that by wit, he means that sharpness of conceit (as he elsewhere calls it) and splendour of imagery, which is suited to poetry; and it is remarkable that he here informs us, he had VIRGIL particularly in view, when he gave this definition of poetical wit; the very author whom Addison has named for the purpose of shewing the impropriety of this definition of wit, when considered in its ordinary acceptation. Their reasoning on this subject, therefore, resembles the game of cross-purposes.