PREFACE TO TRANSLATION OF OVID'S EPISTLES 111

distinguish, and as it were individuate him from all other writers. When we are come thus far, 'tis time to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to give his thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or, if not, to vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance. The like care must be taken of the more outward ornaments, the words. When they appear (which is but seldom) literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since every language is so full of its own proprieties, that what is beautiful in one, is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words: 'tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense. I suppose he may stretch his chain to such a latitude; but by innovation of thoughts, methinks he breaks it. By this means the spirit of an author may be transfused, and yet not lost: and thus 'tis plain, that the reason alleged by Sir John Denham1 has no farther force than to expression; for thought, if it be translated truly, cannot be lost in another language; but the words that convey it to our apprehension (which are the image and ornament of that thought,) may be so ill chosen, as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress, and rob it of its native lustre. There is, therefore, a liberty to be allowed for the expression; neither is it necessary that words and lines should be confined to the measure of their original. The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be

'Poetry is of so subtle a spirit that in pouring out of one language into another it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum.'-Denham, Preface to the translation of the Second Aeneid.

luxuriant, 'tis his character to be so; and if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid. It will be replied, that he receives advantage by this lopping of his superfluous branches; but I rejoin, that a translator has no such right. When a painter copies from the life, I suppose he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments, under pretence that his picture will look better: perhaps the face which he has drawn would be more exact, if the eyes or nose were altered; but 'tis his business to make it resemble the original. In two cases only there may a seeming difficulty arise; that is, if the thought be notoriously trivial or dishonest; but the same answer will serve for both, that then they ought not to be translated:Et quae

Desperes tractata nitescere posse, relinquas.1 Thus I have ventured to give my opinion on this subject against the authority of two great men, but I hope without offence to either of their memories; for I both loved them living, and reverence them now they are dead. But if, after what I have urged, it be thought by better judges that the praise of a translation consists in adding new beauties to the piece, thereby to recompense the loss which it sustains by change of language, I shall be willing to be taught better, and to recant. In the meantime it seems to me that the true reason why we have so few versions which are tolerable, is not from the too close pursuing of the author's sense, but because there are so few who have all the talents which are requisite for translation, and that there is so little praise and so small encouragement for so considerable a part of learning.

1 And abandon everything which you feel that you will never make to shine in the handling. Horace, A.P. 149.

CHAPTER V

POPE AND HIS CIRCLE

It was natural that at the beginning of the eighteenth century literary interests should be concentrated more and more closely upon London. Political intrigues and controversies gave abundant opportunity to a ready pen; statesmen of both parties were generous patrons who could reward with pay or place a timely pamphlet or a well-turned copy of verses; wits were sharpened at clubs and social gatherings; fashion hung round the court and took its tone from the presence-chamber. Chelsea might be an outpost and Tunbridge Wells a remote colony, but west of Staines was a wilderness which had nothing to counterbalance the amenities of civilization. 'I hate,' says a disconsolate poet in the Midlands

I hate the brook that murmurs at my feet, Give me the kennels of St. James's Street; And when in summer heat we pant for air, Give me the breezes of St. James's Square. Provincial life was left to its own devices; poet and fop, quidnunc and politician alike turned their back on the country to whisper compliments at my lady's basset-table, or settle affairs of state over a bowl of punch at the coffee-house.

Not far from St. James's Square there used to meet, during the early years of the century, one of the most brilliant groups that ever debated a principle or discussed a policy. The host was Harley, the great political adventurer who overthrew the Whig aristocracy of King William's reign, and round his table sat Pope and Swift and Arbuthnot and

Prior and Gay; Peterborough, the most unorthodox of generals and the most amusing of dispatch-writers, and Bolingbroke, the witty and philosophic author of the Patriot King, who inspired almost all the Essay on Man, and about whom, when the comet appeared and men wondered at the meaning of the portent, 'I thought,' said Pope, 'that it had come for Bolingbroke, as a coach calls at one's door for visitors.'

Of these men Swift has been the most misjudged. We admire him but with trembling; we customarily think of him in one of his terrible fits of rage, hurling invective and blasphemy against human nature. But there was far more in him than this. For many years he' dictated the political opinions of the English people'. He was as keen as Voltaire to destroy an abuse or overwhelm a tyranny. The writers of his own party treated him with unvarying love and veneration: Addison, who was in many ways his opponent, called him 'the greatest genius, the most agreeable companion and the truest friend'. Assuredly such a character as his cannot be summed up in a confession of 'saeva indignatio'.

The truth would seem to be that he was an idealist soured by disappointment. He lashed mankind because he expected so much from it. His satire is essentially constructive: behind the irony one finds great thoughts, a love of justice and charity and honour. Where he saw roguery he fell upon it in a passion of hate-foul, merciless, unspeakable, dark with that presage of insanity which came closer as the years wore on. But it is not fair to judge him wholly or mainly by these fits of demoniac possession. He fought for the cause of humanity with conviction, with loyalty, with unswerving courage; and we may remember this ere

It may be observed that Swift's irony, though always simple and natural, is unmistakable. Defoe's is sometimes so grave that we may be deluded into taking it for earnest.

we reproach him with the horror which settled like a poisonous cloud upon his life.

Pope, his compeer and his intimate friend, was an artist of a very different temper. His satire is almost always destructive, almost always personal; one thinks of the 'little figure writhing with anguish as he read some coarse lampoon on his deformity and laid it down with a forced smile, saying, 'these things are my diversions.' On the larger issues he seldom gives the impression that he feels deeply. Virtue is the opportunity for a compliment, vice the opportunity for an epigram; even religion itself is a comfortable optimistic theism which never drives to the roots. The centre of his genius, apart from satire, is to be found in The Rape of the Lock: he treats his artificial theme with perfect grace and felicity; nowhere in our literature has romance been more charmingly bantered.

Yet for all their differences Pope and Swift have one point in common. Each is, in his way, an unerring master of style. The prose of Swift is a model of simplicity and ease, a texture so perfect that it can afford to dispense with ornament. The verse of Pope is like the verse of Racine, lucid, polished, melodious; a little monotonous in the cadence, lacking the varied flexibility of Dryden, but compensating by an extraordinary sweetness in the tone. He is a master of the aphorism, of the terse phrase, of the clear-cut sentence: he never wastes a word or bows to a rhyme; his best lines are as exact as those of a miniature. It is not surprising that he influenced every couplet-writer of his time and set the pattern which they vainly endeavoured to imitate.

Prior and Gay are the masters of a lighter vein : the one scholar, wit, and man of the world, who had served as Ambassador at the French Court and had bandied repartees with King Louis himself; the