ation there is involved enough of creation to supply the
incalculable element which cheats the theorist. Possibly some day the
miracle may be wrought, and, in spite of changing literary fashions, we
may have our English version of Homer in a form sufficient not only for
an age but for all time.

It is this incalculable quality in creative work that has made
theorizing on the methods of translation more than a mere academic
exercise. Forced to adjust itself to the facts of actual production,
theory has had to follow new paths as literature has followed new paths,
and in the process it has acquired fresh vigor and flexibility. Even as
we leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of a
worn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individual
approach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry," says Dryden apropos
of Roscommon's rules for translation, "is like a seeming demonstration
in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the
mechanic operation."[461] Confronted by such discrepancies, the theorist
has again and again had to modify his "specious" rules, with the result
that the theory of translation, though a small, is yet a living and
growing element in human thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[365] _Preface to the Reader_, in _The Natural History of C. Plinius
Secundus_, London, 1601.

[366] _Dedication_, in _Ovid's Metamorphosis, Englished by G. S._, London,
1640.

[367] _Dedication_, in _The Poems of Horace rendered into Verse by Several
Persons_, London, 1666.

[368] _Juvenal and Persius_, translated by Barten Holyday, Oxford, 1673
(published posthumously).

[369] _Dedication of the Aeneis_, in _Essays of John Dryden_, ed. W. P.
Ker, v. 2, p. 235.

[370] _Postscript to the Reader_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 243.

[371] _Rowe_, in _Lives of the Poets_, Dublin, 1804, p. 284.

[372] _The Argument_, in _The Passion of Dido for Aeneas_, translated by
Edmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin, London, 1658.

[373] _Dedication_, in _Translations of Horace_. John Hanway, 1730.

[374] _Dedication_, dated 1728, reprinted in _The English Poets_, London,
1810, v. 20.

[375] _Preface_ to _The Destruction of Troy_, in Denham, _Poems and
Translations_, London, 1709.

[376] _To the courteous not curious reader._

[377] Comment on Trapp's "blank version" of Virgil, in _Life of Dryden_.

[378] _Preface to Sylvae_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 266.

[379] _Dedication of the Aeneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, p.