poet, when in his work, as in a celestial mirror, each of us beholds
_himself_ naturally and truly pictured, and yet ennobled? What wonder if
the nation, proud of itself, of its position, and of its memories, exalts
its own darling son of song, who may have fixed, in a precious throng of
imperishable words, the peculiar spirit of thinking, of loving, of daring,
which has made the nation what it has been, is, and hopes long to be? What
wonder if humankind, when mighty ages have departed, and languages once
cultivated in their beauty, have ceased from being spoken, should bring
across lands and seas crowns of undying laurels to cast at the feet of
some awful poet who cannot die? In whose true, capacious, and prophetic
mind, the coming civilization of his own people was long beforehand
anticipated and predisposed? And in whose antique verse we, the offspring
of other ages, and tongues, and races, drink still the freshly-flowing and
ever-living waters of original and unexhausted humanity?

Oh! how shall such strains as these, in which each single word and
syllable has in itself a spell, more potent by its position, survive, in
undiminished force and beauty, the art that would fain spirit them away
out of one language, which they have breathed all life long, into another
which they have to learn to love? Lived there ever such a magician? Never.

There is reason for sadness in the above little paragraph. But after due
rumination, let us forget it, and proceed. Hear Dryden prosing away upon
paraphrase, and metaphrase, and imitation, in his very best style.

"All translation, I suppose, may be reduced to these three
heads--First, that of metaphrase, or turning an author, word by word,
and line by line, from one language into another. Thus, or near this
manner, was Horace his _Art of Poetry_ translated by Ben Jonson. The
second way is that of paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where
the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost,
but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that,
too, is admitted to be amplified, but not altered. Such is Mr
Waller's translation of Virgil's fourth AEneid. The third way is that
of imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name)
assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sense, but
to forsake them both as he sees occasion, and taking only some
general hints