out to ostentation, yet their common practice was to look no further before them than the next line; whence it will inevitably follow, that they can drive to no certain point, but ramble from one subject to another, and conclude with somewhat which is not of a piece with their beginning:

Purpureus latè qui splendeat, unus et alter
Assuitur pannus,—

as Horace says; though the verses are golden, they are but patched into the garment. But our poet has always the goal in his eye, which directs him in his race; some beautiful design, which he first establishes, and then contrives the means which will naturally conduct him to his end. This will be evident to judicious readers in this work of his Epistles, of which somewhat, at least in general, will be expected.

The title of them in our late editions is EPISTOLÆ HEROIDUM, the Letters of the HEROINES. But Heinsius has judged more truly, that the inscription of our author was barely, Epistles; which he concludes from his cited verses, where Ovid asserts this work as his own invention, and not borrowed from the Greeks, whom, as the masters of their learning, the Romans usually did imitate. But it appears not from their writers, that any of the Grecians ever touched upon this way, which our poet thesefore justly has vindicated to himself. I quarrel not at the word Heroidum, because it is used by Ovid in his Art of Love:

Jupiter ad veteres supplex Heroidas ibat.

But sure he could not be guilty of such an oversight, to call his work by the name of Heroines, when there are divers men or heroes, as namely Paris, Leander, and Acontius, joined in it.-Except Sabinus, who writ some answers to Ovid's Letters,

(Quam celer è toto rediit meus orbe Sabinus,)

I remember not any of the Romans who have treated on this subject, save only Propertius, and that but once, in his epistle of Arethusa to Lycotas, which is written so near the style of Ovid, that it seems to be but an imitation, and therefore ought not to defraud our poet of the glory of his invention.

Concerning this work of the Epistles, I shall content myself to observe these few particulars. First, that they are generally granted to be the most perfect piece of Ovid, and that the style of them is tenderly passionate and courtly; two properties well agreeing with the persons, which were heroines, and lovers. Yet where the characters were lower, as in none, and Hero, he has kept close to nature, in drawing his images after a country life; though perhaps he has Romanized his Grecian dames too much, and made them speak sometimes as if they had been born in the city of Rome, and under the empire of Augustus. There seems to be no great variety in the particular subjects which he has chosen ; most of the Epistles being written from ladies who were forsaken by their lovers: which is the reason that many of the same thoughts come back upon

us in divers Letters. But of the general character of women, which is modesty, he has taken a most becoming care; for his amorous expressions go no further than virtue may allow, and therefore may be read, as he intended them, by matrons without a blush.

Thus much concerning the poet; whom you find translated by divers hands, that you may at least have that variety in the English, which the subject denied to the author of the Latin.-It remains that I should say somewhat of poetical translations in general, and give my opinion (with submission to better judgments) which way of version seems to me most proper.

All translation, I suppose, may be reduced to these three heads:

First, that of metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, and line by line, from one language into another. Thus, or near this manner, was Horace his Art of Poetry translated by Ben Jonson. The second way is that of paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost; but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense, and that too is admitted to be amplified, but not altered. Such is Mr. Waller's translation of Virgil's fourth Æneid. The third way is that of imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both, as he sees occasion: and taking only

some general hints from the original, to run division on the ground-work, as he pleases. Such is Mr. Cowley's practice in turning two odes of Pindar, and one of Horace, into English.

Concerning the first of these methods, our master Horace has given us this caution:

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus
Interpres :-

Nor word for word too faithfully translate; as the Earl of Roscommon has excellently rendered it. Too faithfully is indeed pedantically: it is a faith like that which proceeds from superstition, blind and zealous. Take it in the expression of Sir John Denham, to Sir Richard Fanshaw, on his version of the PASTOR FIDO:

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line:
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations, and translators too:
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

It is almost impossible to translate verbally, and well, at the same time; for the Latin, a most severe and compendious language, often expresses that in one word, which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. It is frequent also that the conceit is couched in some expression, which will be lost in English:

Atque idem venti vela fidemque ferent.

What poet of our nation is so happy as to express

this thought literally in English, and to strike wit or almost sense out of it?

In short, the verbal copier is encumbered with so many difficulties at once, that he can never disentangle himself from all. He is to consider at the same time the thought of his author, and his words, and to find out the counterpart to each in another language; and besides this, he is to confine himself to the compass of numbers, and the slavery of rhyme. It is much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs: a man may shun a fall by using caution, but the gracefulness of motion is not to be expected; and when we have said the best of it, it is but a foolish task; for no sober man would put himself into a danger, for the applause of escaping without breaking his neck. We see Ben Jonson could not avoid obscurity in his literal translation of Horace, attempted in the same compass of lines: nay Horace himself could scarce have done it to a Greek poet.

-brevis esse laboro,

Obscurus fio:

either perspicuity or gracefulness will frequently be wanting. Horace has indeed avoided both these rocks in his translation of the three first lines of Homer's Odysses, which he has contracted into two:

Dic mihi, Musa virum, capta post tempora Troja,
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes.
Muse, speak the man, who since the siege of Troy,
So many towns, such change of manners saw.

EARL OF ROSCOMMON.