," he says, "is that they have only one
style; and consequently all their authors, Homer, Virgil, Horace, and
Ovid, are compelled to speak in the same numbers, and the same unvaried
expression. The free-born spirit of poetry is confined in twenty
constant syllables, and the sense regularly ends with every second line,
as if the writer had not strength enough to support himself or courage
enough to venture into a third."[443]

Revolts against the couplet, then, were few and generally unsuccessful.
Prose translations of the epic, such as have in our own day attained
some popularity, were in the eighteenth century regarded with especial
disfavor. It was known that they had some vogue in France, but that was
not considered a recommendation. The English translation of Madame
Dacier's prose Homer, issued by Ozell, Oldisworth, and Broome, was
greeted with scorn. Trapp, in the preface to his Virgil, refers to the
new French fashion with true insular contempt. Segrais' translation is
"almost as good as the French language will allow, which is just as fit
for an epic poem as an ambling nag is for a war horse.... Their language
is excellent for prose, but quite otherwise for verse, especially
heroic. And therefore tho' the translating of poems into prose is a
strange modern invention, yet the French transprosers are so far in the
right because their language will not bear verse." Mickle, mentioning in
his _Dissertation on the Lusiad_ that "M. Duperron de Castera, in 1735,
gave in French prose a loose unpoetical paraphrase of the Lusiad,"
feels it necessary to append in a note his opinion that "a literal prose
translation of poetry is an attempt as absurd as to translate fire into
water."

If there was little encouragement for the translator to experiment with
new solutions of the problems of versification, there was equally little
latitude allowed him in the other division of his peculiar province,
diction. In accordance with existing standards, critics doubled their
insistence on Decorum, a quality in which they found the productions of
former times lacking. Johnson criticizes Dryden's _Juvenal_ on the
ground that it wants the dignity of its original.[444] Fawkes finds
Creech "more rustic than any of the rustics in the Sicilian bard," and
adduces in proof many illustrations, from his calling a "noble pastoral
cup a fine two-handled pot" to his dubbing his characters "Tawney Bess,
Tom, Will, Dick" in vulgar English style.[445] Fa