and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others
have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it
escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal,
whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to
ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcase indeed is presented to the
English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. It is in this art,
of communicating the ancient poet's ideas with force and energy equal to
his own, that Dryden has so completely exceeded all who have gone
before, and all who have succeeded him. The beautiful and unequalled
version of the Tale of Myrrha in the "Metamorphoses," the whole of the
Sixth AEneid, and many other parts of Dryden's translations, are
sufficient, had he never written one line of original poetry, to
vindicate the well-known panegyric of Churchill:--

"Here let me bend, great Dryden, at thy shrine,
Thou dearest name to all the tuneful Nine!
What if some dull lines in cold order creep,
And with his theme the poet seems to sleep?
Still, when his subject rises proud to view,
With equal strength the poet rises too:
With strong invention, noblest vigour fraught,
Thought still springs up, and rises out of thought;
Numbers ennobling numbers in their course,
In varied sweetness flow, in varied force;
The powers of genius and of judgment join,
And the whole art of poetry is thine."

We are in this disquisition naturally tempted to inquire, whether Dryden
would have succeeded in his proposed design to translate Homer, as
happily as in his Virgil? And although he himself more fiery, and
therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there
may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his
own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent,
he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which
must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the
AEneid. If a translator has any characteristic and peculiar foible, it is
surely unfortunate to choose an original, who may give peculiar
facilities to exhibit them. Thus, even Dryden's repeated disclamation of
puns, points, and quibbles, and all the repentance of his more sober
hours, was unable, so soon as he began to translate Ovid, to prevent his
sliding back into the practice of that false wit with which his earlier
productions are imbued. Hence he has been sed