fair sex, understood not Latin: but if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be ashamed, who do. For my own part, I am ready to acknowledge, that I have transgressed the rules which I have given, and taken more liberty than a just translation will allow. But so many gentlemen, whose wit and learning are well known, being joined in it, I doubt not but their excellencies will make you ample satisfaction for my errours. 4 Mrs. Aphra Behn. "The affluence and comprehension of our language (says Dr. Johnson) is very illustriously displayed in our poetical translation of Ancient Writers; a work which the French seem to relinquish in despair, and which we were long unable to perform with dexterity. Ben Jonson thought it necessary to copy Horace almost word by word; Feltham, his contemporary and adversary, considers it as indispensably requisite in a translation to give line for line. It is said that Sandys, whom Dryden calls the best versifier of the last age, has struggled hard to comprise every book of his English Metamorphoses in the same number of verses with the original. Holyday had nothing in view but to shew that he understood his author, with so little regard to the grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers, that his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read without reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by understanding them. Cowley saw that such copiers were a servile race; he asserted his liberty, and spread his wings so boldly, that he left his authors. It was reserved for Dryden to fix the limits of poetical liberty, and give us just rules and examples of translation, "When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While they run on together, the closest translation may be considered as the best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with something equivalent. Translation therefore, says Dryden, is not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase. "All polished languages have different styles; the concise, the diffuse, the lofty, and the humble. In the proper choice of style consists the resemblance which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of diction as the author would have given them, had his language been English rugged magnificence is not to be softened: hyperbolical ostentation is not to be repressed, nor sententious affectation to have its points blunted. A translator is to be like his author: it is not his business to excel him. "The reasonableness of these rules seems sufficient for their vindication; and the effects produced by observing them were so happy, that I know not whether they were ever opposed but by Sir Edward Sherburne, a man whose learning was greater than his powers of poetry; and who, being better qualified to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca, has introduced his version of three tragedies by a defence of close translation. The authority of Horace, which the new translators cited in defence of their practice, he has, by a judicious explanation, taken fairly from them; but reason wants not Horace to support it." Sir Edward Sherburne, in his Life of Seneca, prefixed to his translation of three of that writer's tragedies, 8vo. 1702, after quoting from Horace the lines referred to by our author in p. 15, Publica materies privati juris erit, si Nec circa vilem patulumve moraberis orbem, Interpres- observes, that these "verses duly read and considered, are so far from admitting the sense these men would put upon them, that they clearly infer a quite different and contrary meaning, which yet I would not have them take from me, but from the illustrious Huetius, in his excellent Discourse de optimo genere interpretandi, remarking upon this place: Hujus loci ea mens est; (says he,) in materiam ab aliis occupatam, et publici juris, non ita esse involandum, ut verbum verbo reddatur, quasi fidi interpretis officium exequatur poeta; sed ut argumentum et rerum descriptionem exprimat, tum insignia delibet ornamenta, verba prætermittat: i. e. The mind of which place is this,-As to the matter already assumed and published by others, a poet may yet justly make the subject his own, if he fall not so upon it, as to render it word for word, by executing the part of a faithful interpreter, but endeavour to adorn the argument with new embellishments of fresh invention, and pass by the words of the first writer.-This is the exposition the learned Huetius makes of this place; and it will be more than difficult to find an interpretation given thereof by any commentator, (from Acron and Porphyrio to the last that ever animadverted upon Horace,) dissonant from that he hath here delivered. "By this passage of Horace, thus truly explained, the reader may clearly perceive, first, that Horace gave no rules for translation, and therefore cannot be said (as some have styled him) to be of that art the great lawgiver: for doubtless he thought it below him. Next, that according to the judgment of Horace himself, it is the duty of a faithful interpreter to translate what he undertakes, word for word illud ergo ex Horatii sententiâ fidi interpretis munus est, verbum verbo referre; quod calculo suo confirmat Helenius Acron, says the said judicious Huetius." PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART OF POETICAL MISCELLANIES." OR For this last half year I have been troubled with the disease, as I may call it, of translation. The cold prose fits of it, which are always the most tedious with me, were spent in THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE; the hot, which succeeded them, in 6 The first volume of the collection of poems, generally known by the name of DRYDEN'S MISCELLANIES, was published in 1684, without any preface or introduction. The second, which was entitled "SYLVÆ, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies," appeared in the next year: the third volume, which bears the title of EXAMEN POETICUM, was published in 1693, and the fourth, which was called THE ANNUAL MISCELLANY, in 1694. And here ended our author's concern with this collection; for the two remaining volumes were not issued out till after his death, viz. in 1703, and 1708.-In 1716, Jacob Tonson, the proprietor, published a new edition of this Miscellany, which differs very much from the former collection, containing many additional pieces, not in the original Miscellany, and on the other hand, omitting several poems which are found there. this volume of Verse Miscellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myself a kind of ease in the change of the paroxysm; never suspecting but that the humour would have wasted itself in two or three pastorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, something that was more pleasing in them, than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon some parts of them which had most affected me in the reading. These were my natural impulses for the undertaking but there was an accidental motive, which was full as forcible, and God forgive him who was the occasion of it. It was my Lord Roscommon's Essay on translated Verse,' which made me uneasy till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in the mathematicks; very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions; I am sure my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no This Essay was first published in 4to. in 1680; the second edition, corrected and enlarged, appeared in 1684. A commendatory copy of English verses, by our author, is prefixed to both editions; and before the second, one in Latin, by his son Charles Dryden, then a student of Trinity College, in Cambridge. Lord Roscommon died in January, 1684-5. |