Desperes tractata nitescere posse, relinquas.'

"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 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 that 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."

We could write a useful commentary on each paragraph of that lively
dissertation. The positions laid down are not, in all their extent,
tenable; and Dryden himself, in other places, advocates principles of
Translation altogether different from these, and violates them in his
practice by a thousand beauties as well as faults. We confine ourselves to
one or two remarks.

Dryden, in assigning the qualifications of a poetical Translator, seems to
speak with due caution--"He must have a genius to the art." How much,
then, of the powers are asked in him which go to making the original poet?
Not the great creative genius. In order effectively to translating the
Song of Achilles, he need not have been able to invent the character of
Achilles, or to delineate it, if he found it, as Homer might largely,
invented in tradition to his hands. But he must be the adequate critic of
the Song full and whole. He must feel the Achilles whom Homer has given
him, through chilling blood, and thrilling nerve, and almost through
shivering, shuddering bone. Neither need he be, inverse and word possibly,
the creator for thoughts of his own. That Homer is. He is not called upon
to be, in his own strength, an audacious, impetuous, majestic, and
magnanimous thinker. It is enough if he have the sensibility, the
simplicity, the sincerity, the sympathy, and the intellectual capacity, to
become all this, on the strength of another. But if he could not create
the thoughts, neither could he, upon his own