slation, certain elements in the theory of Denham and Cowley
remained popular throughout the seventeenth and even the eighteenth
century. A favorite comment in the complimentary verses attached to
translations is the assertion that the translator has not only equaled
but surpassed his original. An extreme example of this is Dryden's
fatuous reference to the Earl of Mulgrave's translation of Ovid:

How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear
His fame augmented by an English peer,
How he embellishes his Helen's loves,
Outdoes his softness, and his sense improves.[405]

His earlier lines to Sir Robert Howard on the latter's translation of
the _Achilleis_ of Statius are somewhat less bald:

To understand how much we owe to you,
We must your numbers with your author's view;
Then shall we see his work was lamely rough,
Each figure stiff as if designed in buff;
His colours laid so thick on every place,
As only showed the paint, but hid the face;
But as in perspective we beauties see
Which in the glass, not in the picture be,
So here our sight obligingly mistakes
That wealth which his your bounty only makes.
Thus vulgar dishes are by cooks disguised,
More for their dressing than their substance prized.[406]

It was especially in cases where the original lacked smoothness and
perspicuity, the qualities which appealed most strongly to the century,
that the claim to improvement was made. Often, however, it was
associated with notably accurate versions. Cartwright calls upon the
readers of Holiday's _Persius_,

who when they shall view
How truly with thine author thou dost pace,
How hand in hand ye go, what equal grace
Thou dost observe with him in every term,
They cannot but, if just, justly affirm
That did your times as do your lines agree,
He might be thought to have translated thee,
But that he's darker, not so strong; wherein
Thy greater art more clearly may be seen,
Which does thy Persius' cloudy storms display
With lightning and with thunder; both which lay
Couched perchance in him, but wanted force
To break, or light from darkness to divorce,
Till thine exhaled skill compressed it so,
That forced the clouds to break, the light to show,
The thunder to be heard. That now each child
Can prattle what was meant; whilst thou art styled
Of all, with titles of true dign