Denham has no further 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 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 quæ 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 1 Adapted from Horace, De Arte Poetica, 149-50. Translate (adapting Ben Jonson): 'Let go What you despair, being handled, might not show.' 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. Horace his Art of Poetry. NOTES. 'Horace :' Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.), a famous Roman poet. 'His,' for possessive inflection: see notes (28,539), page 18. Mr Waller. Edmund Waller (160687), a distinguished poet. His best poem is the Panegyric to my Lord Protector (1655). To run division &c. A musical metaphor: a 'division' iş a 'variation of melody upon some fundamental harmony.' Cf. 'to ring the changes.' So Ford, The Lover's Melancholy, Act I., sc. i.: 'For every several strain The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own; He could not run division with more art Upon his quaking instrument than she, The nightingale, did with her various notes The Earl of Roscommon. Wentworth Dillon (1634 ?-84), Earl of Roscommon, translated Horace's Art of Poetry (1680), and wrote an Essay on Translated Verse (1684). He was a nephew of the famous Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Sir John Denham (1615-68), a distin guished poet. His chief poem, Cooper's Hill (1643), is still much admired. Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-66), a diplomatist and poet. He translated from the Italian Guarini's Pastor Fido (Faithful Shepherd), a pastoral relations. Cf. Jeremy Taylor's 'drenched in water and the divine vengeance,' page 169, note. Odysseys. Dryden uses the plur., for 'books of the Odyssey.' Cf. Discourse on Epic Poetry (Dedication to Translation of Vergil's Eneid); 'Homer's Iliads and Odysseys.' So he speaks of Vergil's Eneids (cf. above, 'Vergil's fourth Eneid,' and, below, 'the second Eneid'); and Mr William Morris styles his recent translation.' The Eneids of Virgil.' The poems as wholes are commonly Eneïs, Ilias; cf. 'There are parts of the Æneis which resemble some parts both of the Ilias and of the Odysseys' (Discourse on Epic Poetry). Ulysses (a Latin form of the Greek Odysseus: Greek d often appears in Latin as 7), a famous hero of the Trojan war. He schemed and fought on the Greek side, and was distinguished for courage and eloquence, and especially resource. He is the hero of Homer's Odyssey, in which are recounted all his adventures and sufferings in his return from Troy. He reached home after being cast about for ten years. Have carried. Plur. verb, with 'either ing first to one and then to the other. To soar out of sight &c. Pindar is remarkable for elevation of style. Cf. Gray, Progress of Poesy, iii. 3. By no other way than imitation. 'If a man should undertake to translate Pindar word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another' (Cowley). Vergil. Publius Vergĭlĭus Măro (70—19 B.C.), a famous Roman poet. Besides the great epic poem, the Eneis (Eneid), in twelve books, he also wrote Bucolica (or Ecloga, 'Selections'), ten pastoral poems, and Georgica, a didactic poem on agriculture, in four books. Dryden says: 'The critics are not yet agreed how the word Virgil should be written' (Life of Vergil). He writes Virgil. Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C. -18 A.D.), a famous Roman poet. Vergil must be still excepted. Dryden's admiration is unbounded. Translation of the second Æneid. Denham himself avoids the word 'translation;' he entitles his work "The Destruction of Troy; An Essay on the Second Book of Vergil's Æneid. Not vitiate the sense... the spirit of an author, &c. Compare Boileau's judgment. (See, below, Extract from Bolingbroke.) Compare this passage with the following one on the same subject. ON TRANSLATION (II.) (From the Preface to Sylva, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscel lanies, containing translations from Theocritus, Lucretius, Horace, and Homer: 1685.) 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 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 Vergil, 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 Oglebys 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: '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 habitudes 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 Р ingenious young men take up some cried-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 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 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 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 '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 Vergil 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 Vergil, 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 sate to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish |