rrow complacency of its exponents,
and the record of this time is by no means one of uniform progress. The
seventeenth century shows clearly marked alternations of opinion; now it
sanctions extreme methods; now, by reaction, it inclines towards more
moderate views. The eighteenth century, during the greater part of its
course, produces little that is new in the way of theory, and adopts,
without much attempt to analyze them, the formulas left by the preceding
period. We may now resume the history of these developments at the point
where it was dropped in Chapter III, at the end of Elizabeth's reign.

In the first part of the new century the few minor translators who
described their methods held theories much like those of Chapman. W. L.,
Gent., in the extremely flowery and discursive preface to his version of
Virgil's _Eclogues_, says, "Some readers I make no doubt they (the
translations) will meet with in these dainty mouthed times, that will
tax me with not coming resolved word for word and line for line with the
author.... I used the freedom of a translator, not tying myself to the
tyranny of a grammatical construction but breaking the shell into many
pieces, was only careful to preserve the kernel safe and whole from the
violence of a wrong or wrested interpretation." After a long simile
drawn from the hunting field he concludes, "No more do I conceive my
course herein to be faulty though I do not affect to follow my author so
close as to tread upon his heels." John Vicars, who professes to have
robed Virgil in "a homespun English gray-coat plain," says of his
manner, "I have aimed at these three things, perspicuity of the matter,
fidelity to the author, and facility or smoothness to recreate thee my
reader. Now if any critical or curious wit tax me with a _Frustra fit
per plura &c._ and blame my not curious confinement to my author line
for line, I answer (and I hope this answer will satisfy the moderate and
ingenuous) that though peradventure I could (as in my Babel's Balm I
have done throughout the whole translation) yet in regard of the lofty
majesty of this my author's style, I would not adventure so to pinch his
spirits, as to make him seem to walk like a lifeless ghost. But on
thinking on that of Horace, _Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio_, I
presumed (yet still having an eye to the genuine sense as I was able)
to expatiate with poetical liberty, where necessity of matter and phrase
enforced." Vicars' warrant fo