The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters Concerning Poetical Translations, by
William Benson

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Title: Letters Concerning Poetical Translations
And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c.

Author: William Benson

Release Date: January 18, 2006 [EBook #17548]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LETTERS

CONCERNING

Poetical Translations, &c.

(Price One Shilling.)

LETTERS

CONCERNING

Poetical Translations,

AND

VIRGIL'S and MILTON'S

ARTS of VERSE, &c.

_LONDON_:
Printed for J. ROBERTS, near the _Oxford-Arms_
in _Warwick-Lane_. MDCCXXXIX.

LETTER I.

_SIR,_

I am now going to obey your Commands; but you must let me do it in my
own way, that is, write as much, or as little at a time as I may have
an Inclination to, and just as things offer themselves. After this
manner you may receive in a few Letters, all that I have said to you
about poetical Translations, and the resemblance there is between
_Virgil's_ and _Milton's_ Versification, and some other Matters of the
same nature.

To begin with the Business of Translation.

Whoever sits down to translate a Poet, ought in the first place to
consider his Author's peculiar _Stile_; for without this, tho' the
Translation may be very good in all other respects, it will hardly
deserve the Name of a Translation.

The two great Men amongst the Antients differ from each other as much
in this particular as in the Subjects they treat of. The Stile of
_Homer_, who sings the Anger or Rage of _Achilles_, is _rapid_. The
Stile of _Virgil_, who celebrates the Piety of _AEneas_, is
_majestick_. But it may be proper to explain in what this Difference
consists.

The Stile is _rapid_, when several Relatives, each at the head of a
separate Sentence, are governed by one Antecedent, or several Verbs by
one Nominative Case, to the close of the Period.

Thus in _Homer_:

"Goddess, sing the pernicious Anger of _Achilles_, which brought
infinite Wo