277] PREFACE, CONCERNING Mr. DRYDEN'S TRANSLATIONS. Fo OR this laft half-year I have been troubled with the disease (as I may call it) of tranflation: the cold profe fits of it, which are always the most tedious. with me, were spent in the hiftory of the League; the hot, which fucceeded them, in verfe mifcellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myself a kind of ease in the change of the paroxyfm; never fufpecting but the humour would have wafted itself in two or three paftorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, fomething that was more pleafing in them than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon some parts of them, which had most affected me in the reading. Thefe were my natural impulfes for the undertaking. But there was an accidental motive which was full as forcible. It was my Lord Roscommon's Essay on Tranflated Verfe; which made me uneafy till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the fpeculation into practice. For many a fair precept in Poetry is, like a feeming demonftra tion in the Mathematics, very fpecious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation. I think I have generally observed his inftructions; I am sure my reafon is fufficiently convinced both of their truth and ufefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity, than to pretend that I have at least in fome places made examples to his rules. Yet, withal, I must acknowledge, that I have many times exceeded my commiffion for I have both added and omitted, and even fometimes very boldly made fuch expofitions of my authors, as no Dutch commentator will forgive me. Perhaps, in fuch particular paffages, I have thought that I discovered fome beauty yet undiscovered by those pedants, which none but a Poet could have found. Where I have taken away fome of their expreffions, and cut them shorter, it may poffibly be on this confideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear fo fhining in the English. And where I have enlarged them, I defire the false critics would not always think, that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are fecretly in the Poet, or may be fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both thofe confiderations fhould fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are fuch as he would probably have written. For, after all, a tranflator is to make his author appear as charming as poffibly he can, provided he maintains his character, and makes him not unlike himself. Tranflation is a kind of drawing after the 2 life: life: where every one will acknowledge there is a double fort of likeness, a good one and a bad. It is one thing to draw the out-lines true, the features like, the proportions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these graceful, by the posture, the fhadowings, and chiefly by the fpirit which animates the whole. I cannot, without fome indignation, look on an ill copy of an excellent original. Much lefs can I behold with patience Virgil, Homer, and fome others, whofe 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 thofe authors, and confefs we derive all that is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they take those to be the fame Poets, whom our Ogilbys have tranflated? But I dare affure them, that a good Poet is no more like himself, in a dull translation, than his carcafe 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 impoffible even for a good wit to understand and practife them, without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digefting of thofe few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best of company of both fexes; and, in fhort, without wearing off the ruft, which he contracted while he |