passion. Thus much I have urged else where in the defence of Virgil; and since I have been informed by Mr. Moyl, a young gentleman whom I can never sufficiently commend, that the ancients accounted drowning an accursed death. So that if we grant him to have been afraid, he had just occasion for that fear, both in relation to himself and to his subjects.

Dryden.

93. Terror a Source of the Sublime. No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear; for fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on any thing as trifling or contemptible, that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terTor; as serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. Even to things of great dimensions, if we annex any adven. titious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. An even plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the mind with any thing so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to several causes, but it is owing to none more than to this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror.

Burke on the Sublime.

94. Tragedy compared with Epic Poetry. To raise, and afterwards to calm the passions; to purge the soul from pride, by the examples of human miseries which be fal the greatest; in few words, to expel arrogance and introduce compassion, are the greatest effects of tragedy. Great, I must confess, if they were altogether as lasting as they are pompous. But are ha bits to be introduced at three hours warning are radical diseases so suddenly removed? A mountebank may promise such a cure, but a skilful physician will not undertake it. An epic poem is not so much in haste; it works leisurely; the changes which it makes are slow; but the cure is likely to be more perfect. The effects of tragedy, as I said, are too violent to be

lasting. If it be answered, that for this reason tragedies are often to be seen, and the dose to be repeated; this is ta citly to confess, that there is more virtue in one heroic poem, than in many trage dies. A man is humbled one day, and his pride returns the next. Chemical medi'cines are observed to relieve oftener than to cure; for it is the nature of spirits to make swift impressions, but not deep. Ga▾ lenical decoctions, to which I may proper ly compare an epic poem, have more of body in them; they work by their substance and their weight. It is one reason of Aristotle's to prove that tragedy is the more noble, because it turns in a shorter com. pass; the whole action being circumscribed within the space of four-and-twenty hours. He might prove as well that a mushroom is to be preferred before a pcach, because it shoots up in the compass of a night. A chatiot may be driven round the pillar in less space than a large machine, because the bulk is not so great. Is the moon a more noble planet than Saturn, because she makes her revolution in less than thirty days; and he in little less than thirty years? Both their orbs are in proportion to their several magnitudes; and, consequently, the quickness or slowness of their motion, and the time of their circumvolutions, is no argu ment of the greater or less perfection. And besides, what virtue is there in a tragedy, which is not contained in an epic poem? where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punished; and those more amply treated than the narrowness of the drama can admit? the shining quality of an epic hero, his magnanimity, his constancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever characteris our admiration: we are naturally prone to tical virtue his poet gives him, raises first imitate what we admire; and frequent acts produce a habit. If the hero's chief qua lity be vicious, as, for example, the choler and obstinate desire of vengeance in Achil les, yet the moral is instructive: and be sides, we are informed in the very proposition of the Iliad, that this anger was per nicious: that it brought a thousand ills on the Grecian camp. The courage of Achil les is proposed to imitation, not his pride and disobedience to his general, nor his brutal cruelty to his dead enemy, nor the selling his body to his father: we abhor those actions while we read them, and what we abhor we never imitate: the poet only shews them, like rocks or quicksands, to be shunued.

By

By this example the critics have concluded, that it is not necessary the manners of the hero should be virtuous. They are poetically good, if they are of a-piece. Though where a character of perfect virtue is set before us, 'tis more lovely; for there the whole hero is to be imitated. This is the Æneas of Virgil: this is that idea of perfection in an epic poem, which painters and statuaries have only in their minds, and which no hands are able to express. These are the beauties of a God in a human body. When the picture of Achilles is drawn in tragedy, he is taken with those warts and moles, and hard features, by those who represent him on the stage,or he is no more Achilles; for his creator Homer has so described him. Yet even thus he appears a perfect hero, though an imperfect character of virtue. Horace paints him after Homer, and delivers him to be copied on the stage with all those imperfections; therefore they are either not faults in an heroic poem,or faults common to the drama. After all, on the whole merits of the case, it must be acknowledged, that the epic poem is more for the manners, and tragedy for the passions. The passions, as I have said, are violent; and acute distem pers require medicines of a strong and speedy operation. Ill habits of the mind and chronical diseases are to be corrected by degrees, and cured by alteratives; wherein though purges are sometimes necessary, yet diet, good air, and moderate exercise, have the greatest part. The matter being thus stated, it will appear that both sorts of poetry are of use for their proper ends. The stage is active, the epic poem works at greater leisure, yet is active too, when need requires; for dialogue is imitated by the drama, from the more active parts of it. One puts off a fit like the quinquina,and relieves us only for a time; the other roots out the distemper, and gives a healthful habit. The sun enlightens and chears us, dispels fog, and warms the ground with his daily beams; but the corn is sowed, increases, is ripened, and reaped for use, in process of time, and its proper season, I proceed from the greatness of the action to the dignity of the actors; I mean, to the persons employed in both poems. There likewise tragedy will be seen to borrow from the epopee; and that which borrows is always of less dignity, because it has not of its own. A subject, 'tis true, may lend to his sovereign; but the act of borrowing makes the king infe.

rior, because he wants, and the subject supplies. And suppose the persons of the drama wholly fabulous, or of the poet's invention, yet heroic poetry gave him the examples of that invention; because it was first, and Homer the common father of the stage. I know not of any one advantage which tragedy can boast above heroic poetry, but that it is represented to the view, as well as read; and instructs in the closet, as well as on the theatre. This is an uncontested excellence, and a chief branch of its prerogative; yet I may be allowed to say without partiality, that herein the actors share the poet's praise. Your lordship knows some modern tragedies which are beauti. ful on the stage, and yet I am confident you would not read them. Tryphon, the stationer, complains they are seldom asked for in his shop. The poet who flourished in the scene, is damned in the ruelle; nay more, is not esteemed a good poet, by those who see and hear his extravagances with delight. They are a sort of stately fustian and lofty childishness. Nothing but nature can give a sincere pleasure: where that is not imitated, 'tis grotesque painting; the fine woman ends in a fish's tail. Dryden.

$95. History of Translations.

Among the studies which have exercised the ingenious and the learned for more than three centures, none has been more diligently or more successfully cultivated than the art of translation; by which the impediments which bar the way to science are, in some measure, removed, and the multiplicity of languages become less incommodious.

Of every other kind of writing, the ancients have let us models which all succeeding ages have laboured to imitate; but translation may justly be claimed by the moderns as their own. In the first ages

of the world instruction was commonly oral, and learning traditional, and what was not written could not be translated. When alphabetical writing made the conveyance of opinions and the transmission of events more easy and certain, literature did not flourish in more than one country at once; for distant nations had little commerce with each other, and those few whom curiosity sentabroad in quest of im provement, delivered their acquisitions in their own manner, desirous perhaps to be considered as the inventors of that which they had learned from others.

The

The Greeks for a time travelled into Egypt, but they translated no books from the Egyptian language; and when the Macedonians had overthrown the empire of Persia, the countries that became subject to the Grecian dominion studied only the Grecian literature. The books of the conquered nations, if they had any among them, sunk in oblivion; Greece considered herself as the mistress, if not as the parent of arts, her language contained all that was supposed to be known, and, except the sacred writings of the Old Testament, I know not that the library of Alexandria adopted any thing from a foreign tongue..

The Romans confessed themselves the scholars of the Greek, and do not appear to have expected, what has since happened, that the ignorance of succeeding ages would prefer them to their teachers. Every man who in Rome aspired to the praise of literature, thought it necessary to learn Greek, and had no need of versions when they could study the originals. Translation, however, was not wholly neglected. Dramatic poems could be understood by the people in no language but their own, and the Romans were sometimes entertained with the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander. Other works were sometimes attempted; in an old scholiast there is mention of a Latin Iliad, and we have not wholly lost Tully's version of the poem of Aratus ; but it does not appear that any man grew eminent by interpreting another, and perhaps it was more frequent to translate for exercise or amusement than for fame.

The Arabs were the first nation who felt the ardour of translation: when they had subdued the castern provinces of the Greek empire, they found their captives wiser than themselves, and made haste to relieve their wants by imparted knowledge. They discovered that many might grow wise by the labour of a few, and that improvements might be made with speed, when they had the knowledge of former ages in their own Janguage. They therefore made haste to lay hold on medicine and philosophy, and turned their chief authors into Arabic. Whether they attempted the poems is not known; their literary zeal was vehement, but it was short, and probably expired be. fore they had time to add the arts of elegance to those of necessity.

The study of ancient literature was in terrupted in Europe by the irruption of

the northern nations, who subverted the Roman empire, and erected new kingdoms with new languages. It is not strange that such confusion should suspend literary attention: those who lost, and those who gained dominion, had immediate difficulties to encounter, and immediate miseries to redress, and had little leisure, amidst the violence of war, the trepidation of flight, the distresses of forced migration, or the tumults of unsettled conquest, to inquire after speculative truth, to enjoy the amusement of imaginary adventures, to know the history of former ages, or study the events of any other lives. But no sooner had this chaos of dominion sunk into order, than learning began again to flourish in the calm of peace. When life and possessions were secure, convenience and enjoyment were soon sought, iearning was found the highest gratification of the mind, and translation became one of the means by which it was imparted.

At last, by a concurrence of many causes, the European world was roused from its lethargy; those arts which had been long obscurely studied in the gloom of monasteries became the general favourites of mankind; every nation vied with its neigh bour for the prize of learning; the epidemical emulation spread from south to north, and curiosity and translation found their way to Britain.

He that reviews the progress of English literature, will find that translation was very early cultivated among us, but that some principles, either wholly erroneous, or too far extended, hindered our success from being always equal to our diligence.

Chaucer, who is generally considered as the father of our poetry, has left a ver sion of Boetius on the Comforts of Philo sophy, the book which seems to have been the favourite of middle ages, which had been translated into Saxon by King Alfred, and illustrated with a copious comment ascribed to Aquinas. It may be supposed that Chaucer would apply more than common attention to an author of so much celebrity, yet he has attempted nothing higher than a version strictly literal, and has degraded the poetical parts to prose, that the constraint of versification might not obstruct his zeal for fidelity.

Caxton taught us typography about the year 1490. The first book printed in English was a translation. Caxton was both the translator and printer of the De struction of Troye, a book which, in that

infancy

infancy of learning, was considered as the best account of the fabulous ages, and which, though now driven out of notice by authors of no greater use or value, still continued to be read in Caxton's English to the beginning of the present century.

Caxton proceeded as he began, and except the poems of Gower and Chaucer, printed nothing but translations from the French, in which the original is so scrupu lously followed, that they afford us little knowledge of our own language, though the words are English, the phrase is foreign. As learning advanced, new works were adopted into our language, but I think with little improvement of the art of translation, though foreign nations and other languages offered us models of a better method; till in the age of Elizabeth we began to find that greater liberty was ne cessary to elegance, and that elegance was necessary to general reception; some essays were then made upon the Italian poets, which deserve the praise and gratitude of posterity.

But the old practice was not suddenly forsaken; Holland filled the nation with literal translation, and, what is yet more strange, the same exactness was obstinately practised in the version of the poets. This absurd labour of construing into rhyme was countenanced by Jonson, in his version of Horace; and, whether it be that more men have learning than genius, or that the endeavours of that time were more directed towards knowledge than delight, the accuracy of Jonson found more imitators than the elegance of Fairfax; and May, Sandys, and Holiday, confined them selves to the toil of rendering line for line, not indeed with equal felicity, for May and Sandys were poets, and Holiday only a scholar and a critic.

Feltham appears to consider it as the established law of poetical translation, that the lines should be neither more nor fewer

"

than those of the original; and so long had his prejudice prevailed, that Denham praises Fanshaw's version of Guarini as the example of a new and noble way,' as the first attempt to break the boundaries of custom, and assert the natural freedom of the muse.

In the general emulation of wit and genius which the festivity of the Restoration produced, the poets shook off their constraiut, and considered translation as no longer confined to servile closeness. But reformation is seldom the work of pure

Translation

virtue or unassisted reason. was improved more by accident than conviction. The writers of the foregoing age had at least learning equal to their genius, and, being often more able to explain the sentiments or illustrate the allusions of the ancients, than to exhibit their graces and transfuse their spirit, were perhaps willing sometimes to conceal their want of poetry by profusion of literature, and therefore translated literally, that their fidelity might shelter their insipidity or harshness. The wits of Charles's time had seldom more than slight and superficial views, and their care was to hide their want of learning behind the colours of a gay imagination: they therefore translated always with freedom, sometimes with licentiousness, and perhaps expected that their readers should accept sprightliness, for knowledge, and consider ignorance and mistake as the impatience and negligence of a mind too ra pid to stop at difficulties, and too elevated to descend to minuteness.

Thus was translation made more easy to the writer, and more delightful to the reader; and there is no wonder if ease and pleasure have found their advocates. The paraphrastic liberties have been almost universally admitted: and Sherbourn, whose learning was eminent, and who had no need of any excuse to pass slightly over obscurities, is the only weiter who, in later times, has attempted to justify or revive the ancient severity.

There is undoubtedly a mean to be observed. Dryden saw very early, that closeness best preserved an author's sense, and that freedom best exhibited his spirit: he therefore will deserve the highest praise who can give a representation at once faithful and pleasing; who can convey the same thoughts with the same graces, and who, when he translates, changes nothing but the language. Idler.

§ 96. What Talents are requisite to form a good translator.

After all, a translator is to make his author appear as charming as possibly he can, provided he maintains his character and makes him not unlike himself. Translation is a kind of drawing after the life; where every one will acknowledge there is a double sort of likeness, a good one and a bad. 'Tis one thing to draw the outlines true, the features like, the proportions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all those grace

ful,

ful, 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 pa tience, 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 Ogilbys have translated? But I dare assure them, that a good poet is no more like himself in a dull translation, than a carcass would be to his living body. There are many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mothertongue. The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few: 'tis 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 babitudes and conversation with the best of 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 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, from that which is vicious and corrupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or the greatest part of them, most of our ingeni ous young men take up some cry'd-up 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 the 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 critic in his mother tongue, before he attempts to translate 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 au

thor's sense in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers: for, though all those are exceeding difficult to perform, there yet remains an harder task; and 'tis 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 him appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts, 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 (Sir P. Lely) that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were alike. 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 a great distinc tion to be made in sweetness; as in that of sugar and in 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; 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, grave, and majestic writer; one who weighed, not only every thought, but every word and syllable: who was still aiming to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as pos sibly 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 dif fering from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of music in their verses. All the versification and little variety of

Claudian