that for which I looked, At laft I had recourfe to his mafter, Spencer, the author of that immortal poem called the Fairy Queen; and there I met with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spencer had ftudied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer; and among ft the rest of his excellencies had copied that. Looking farther into the Italian, I found Taffo had done the fame; nay more, that all the fonnets in that language, are on the turn of the first thought; which Mr. Walsh, in his late ingenious preface to his poems, has obferved. In fhort, Virgil and Ovid are the two principal fountains of them in Latin poem. And the French at this day are fo fond of them, that they judge them to be the first beauties. Delicat & bien tourné, are the highest commendations, which they beftow, on fomewhat which they think a mafter-piece.

An example of the turn on words, amongst a thoufand others, is that in the last book of Ovid's Metamorphofes :

Heu quantum fcelus eft, in vifcera, vifcera condi!
Congeftoque avidum pinguefcere corpore, corpus ;
Alteriufque animantem animantis vivere lèto!

An example on the turn both of thoughts and words, is to be found in Catullus; in the complaint of Ariadne, when she was left by Thefeus:

Jam jam nulla viro juranti femina credat ;
Nulla viri fperet fermones effe fideles:

Qui dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestît apisci,
Nil metuunt jurare; nihil promittere parcunt.
Sed fimul ac cupidæ mentis fatiata libido eft,
Dicta nihil metuere ; nihil perjuria curant.

An extraordinary turn upon the words, is that in Ovid's Epiftolæ Heroidum, of Sappho to Phaon :

Si nifi qua formá poterit te digna videri,
Nulla futura tua eft; nulla futura tua eft.

Laftly,

Laftly, a turn which I cannot fay is abfolutely on words, for the thought turns with them, is in the Georgick of Virgil; where Orpheus is to receive his wife from hell, on exprefs condition not to look on her, till fhe was come on earth:

Cùm fubita incautum dementia cepit Amantem;
Ignofcenda quidem, fcirent fi ignofcere manes.

I will not burden your lordship with more of them; for I write to a maiter, who understands them better than myself. But I may fafely conclude them to be great beauties: I might defcend alfo to the mechanic beauties of heroic verfe; but we have yet no English profodia, not fo much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; fo that our language is in a manner barbarous; and what government will encourage any one, or more, who are capable of refining it, I know not but nothing under a public expence can go through with it. And I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope an advancement of it in the prefent age.

I am ftill speaking to you, my lord: though, in all probability, you are already out of hearing. Nothing, which my meannefs can produce, is worthy of this long attention. But I am come to the last petition of Abraham: if there be ten righteous lines, in this vaft preface, fpare it for their fake; and alfo fpare the next city, becaufe it is but a little one.

I would excufe the performance of this tranflation, if it were all my own; but the better, though not the greater part being the work of fome gentlemen, who have fucceeded very happily in their undertaking; let their excellencies atone for my imperfections, and those of my fons. I have perused fome of the fatires, which are done by other hands; and they seem to me as perfect in their kind, as any thing I have feen in English verfe. The common way which we have taken, is not a literal tranflation,

but

but a kind of paraphrafe; or fomewhat which is yet more loose, betwixt a paraphrafe and imitation. It was not poffible for us, or any men, to have made it pleasant any other way. If rendering the exact fenfe of thofe authors, almoft line for line, had been our business, Barten Holiday had done it already to our hands and, by the help of his learned notes and illuftrations, not only Juvenal and Perfius, but` what yet is more obfcure, his own verses, might be understood.

:

But he wrote for fame, and wrote to fcholars: we write only for the pleasure and entertainment of thofe gentlemen and ladies, who though they are not fcholars, are not ignorant: perfons of understanding and good fenfe; who not having been converfant in the original, or at leaft not having made Latin verse fo much their bufinefs, as to be critics in it, would be glad to find, if the wit of our two great authors be anfwerable to their fame and reputation in the world. We have therefore endeavoured to give the public all the fatisfaction we are able in this kind.

And if we are not altogether so faithful to our author, as our predeceffors Holiday and Stapylton; yet we may challenge to ourselves this praife, that we fhall be far more pleafing to our readers. We have followed our authors at greater diftance, though not ftep by step, as they have done. For oftentimes they have gone fo clofe, that they have trod on the heels of Juvenal and Perfius, and hurt them by their too near approach. A noble author would not be purfued too clofe by a tranflator. We lofe his fpirit, when we think to take his body. The groffer part remains with us, but the foul is flown away, in fome noble expreffion, or fome delicate turn of words, or thought. Thus Holiday, who made this way his choice, feized the meaning of Juvenal; but the poetry has always fcaped him.

They who will not grant me, that pleasure is one of the ends of poetry, but that it is only a means of compaffing

compaffing the only end, which is inftruction; muft yet allow, that without the means of pleasure, the inftruction is but a bare and dry philofophy; a crude preparation of morals, which we may have from Ariftotle and Epictetus, with more profit than from any poet: neither Holiday nor Stapylton have imitated Juvenal, in the poetical part of him, his diction and his elocution. Nor had they been poets, as neither of them were; yet in the way took, it was impoffible for them to have fucceeded in the poetick part.

The Engllifh verfe which we call heroick, confifts of no more than ten fyllables; the Latin hexameter fometimes rifes to feventeen; as for example, this verse in Virgil:

Pulverulenta putrem fonitu quatit ungula campum.

Here is the difference of no lefs than feven fyllables in a line, betwixt the English and the Latin. Now the medium of these, is about fourteen fyllables; because the dactyle is a more frequent foot in hexameters than the spondee.

But Holiday, without confidering that he writ with the disadvantage of four fyllables lefs in every verfe, endeavours to make one of his lines to comprehend the fenfe of one of Juvenal's. According to the falfity of the propofition was the fuccefs. He was forced to crowd his verfe with ill-founding monofyllables, of which our barbarous language affords him a wild plenty and by that means he arrived at his pedantic end, which was to make a literal tranflation: his verfes have nothing of verfe in them, but only the worst part of it, the rhyme; and that into the bargain, is far from good. But, which is more intolerable, by cramming his ill-chofen, and worfe-founding monofyllables fo close together; the very fenfe which he endeavours to explain, is become more obfcure than that of his author. So that Ho

liday himself cannot be understood, without as large a commentary, as that which he makes on his two authors. For my own part, I can make a fhift to find the meaning of Juvenal without his notes: but his tranflation is more difficult than his author. And I find beauties in the Latin to recompenfe my pains; but in Holiday and Stapylton, my ears, in the first place are mortally offended; and then their fense is fo perplexed, that I return to the original, as the more pleafing task, as well as the more easy.

This must be faid for our tranflation, that if we give not the whole fenfe of Juvenal, yet we give the moft confiderable part of it: we give it, in general, fo clearly, that few notes are fufficient to make us intelligible. We make our author at leaft appear in a poetick drefs. We have actually made him more founding, and more elegant, than he was before in English: and have endeavoured to make him fpeak that kind of English, which he would have fpoken had he lived in England, and had written to this age. If fometimes any of us (and it is but feldom) make him exprefs the customs and manners of our native country, rather than of Rome, it is either when there is fome kind of analogy, betwixt their customs and ours; or when, to make him more eafy to vulgar underftandings, we give him thofe manners which are familiar to us. But I defend not this innovation, it is enough if I can excufe it. For to fpeak fincerely, the manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded: we fhould either make them English, or leave them Roman. If this can neither be defended, nor excufed, let it be pardoned, at leaft, because it is acknowledged; and fo much the more cafly, as being a fault which is never committed without fome pleasure to the reader.

Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious vifit, the best manners will be fhewn in the leaft ceremony. I will flip away while your back

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