of universal reason and experience, as from the authority of individuals in the infancy of both. A few examples went to establish a rule, and the exceptions stood for nothing, till at length they have often been found more numerous than the exemplifications.

LETTER XXIII.

ON THE PRINCIPAL FAults of POETICAL

TRANSLATION.

In order to affift you in deciding for yourself the question you ask me respecting the comparative merits of Pope's and Cowper's tranflation of Homer, I fhall lay before you fome remarks on the chief purposes and principal faults of poetical translation, which suggested themselves to my mind in the course of my earlier reading.

As the great end of all poetry is to pleafe, that of a poetical tranflation must in the first inftance be the fame. But befides this general purpose, it has the additional one of gratifying a laudable defire - in the reader who does not understand the

original, of gaining fome idea how per

fons

All

fons thought and wrote in an age or country often very diftant from his own. Hence arifes a neceffity of preferving, not only the fubject matter and the poeticalbeauties of an original author, but as much as can be done of his peculiar turn of thinking and mode of expreffion. the great schools of arts and letters are marked with a peculiar ftamp of character, derived from the manners, and circumstances of the time and country, which are an interesting fubject of fpeculation. The translator, therefore, who fails to reflect an image of his original, with its characteristic distinctions, though he may prefent us with a figure graceful and pleafing in itself, has not performed his task completely.

A

One of the leading faults of poetical tranflation from the works of antiquity has been of this kind. Our manners and fentiments have become fo very different from those of remote ages, that the two purposes of tranflating agreeably and faithfully, can with great difficulty be made to coincide,

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coincide. And as the first wifh of every writer is to be read, he will naturally be led to prefer that mode of translating which will make his work the most generally acceptable. He will therefore rather study to bring it down to the tafte of his own times than to carry his reader back to those which have been long forgotten, Nor can we blame him for fuch an accommodation to the feelings of his cotemporaries as is neceffary to fecure his main end of pleafing. The fault is, that this defign is ufually carried much farther than is neceffary, and fo far as almost entirely to defeat the other purpose of translation.

In tranflating an author who lived in a rude and uncultivated period, two kinds of accommodation are neceffary. The one confifts in foftening or fuppreffing fuch images and expreffions as would give difguft to a modern reader; the other, in raising and adorning fuch parts as from their extreme fimplicity would appear to him rude and infipid. Both these must be

done to a certain degree, but both require much caution and judgment. The latter, in particular, is a hazardous attempt, demanding a moft chastised and correct taste for its proper execution; and I am furprised at the unguarded latitude which fo rational a critic as Dr. Johnfon allows in this point. Speaking of Pope's Iliad, he fays, "Homer doubtless owes to his tranflator many Ovidian graces not exactly fuitable to his character; but to have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away." What! can there be a groffer violation of every principle of taste and good fenfe, than to make wanton additions to a writer's work in a style totally different from his own and that of the whole age in which he lived? What is this but introducing utter confufion of times and manners into the reader's ideas, and bringing all the striking yariety of literary com-. pofition to one uniform measure of unmeaning refinement?

That this effect has been actually produced by Pope's fpirit of tranflation, may. eafily

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