are men of established reputation, both for wit and learning; at least sufficiently known to be so among all the finer spirits of the age. Sir Henry Sheers' has given many proofs of his excellence in this kind; for while we, by his admirable address, enjoy Polybius in our mother tongue, we can never forget the hand that bestowed the benefit. The learning and judgment above his age, which every one discovers in Mr. Moyle, are proofs of those abilities he has shown in his. country's service, when he was chose to serve it in the senate, as his father had done. The wit of Mr. Blount, and his other performances, need no

8

7 Of Sir Henry Sheers, or Shere, for so our author writes his name in the Notes on Virgil, some account has already been given. See p. 229.

8 This gentleman, whom our author has again mentioned with esteem in the PARALLEL OF POETRY AND PAINTING, was the son of Sir Walter Moyle, and was born in the year 1672. After having been educated at Oxford, he for some time applied himself to the study of law. In 1695 he was chosen to represent the borough of Saltash in parliament; a circumstance which ascertains the piece before us to have been written subsequent to that period. Mr. Moyle assisted Mr. Trenchard in writing his celebrated tract against Standing Armies, and was author of various pieces, first printed in two volumes 8vo. in 1726. An additional volume was published by his friend Antony Hammond, in the following year, containing various tracts, which had been formerly published, and were omitted in that collection of his works.—He died June 11, 1721.

9 Charles Blount, who in the Dedication of his RELIGIO

recommendation from me; they have made too much noise in the world to need a herald. There are some other persons concerned in this work, whose names deserve a place among the foremost, but that they have not thought fit to be known, either out of a bashful diffidence of their own

LAICI calls Dryden "his much honoured friend." He was the second son of the learned traveller, Sir Henry Blount, and was younger brother of Sir Thomas Pope Blount. Charles Blount was born in 1654; and when he was only nineteen, published anonymously a small tract in defence of our author, entitled, "Mr. Dryden Vindicated, in reply to the Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden, with Reflections on the Rota.”—An accurate account of his other works, which are in much esteem with the Deists, may be found in the BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA. The notes of his most celebrated work, the translation of "The two first Books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus," are said to have been partly taken from a MS. of Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and in his ANIMA MUNDI, he is supposed to have been assisted by his father. Having lost his wife, (a daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrel, of Shotover, in Oxfordshire,) whom he had married in 1672, he became enamoured of her sister; and on her refusing to marry him, solely from a scruple concerning the lawfulness of such an union, he in August 1693, put an end to his life by shooting himself through the head. He lived, however, a few days after he had shot himself, during which he would accept of nothing but from the hands of the lady to whom he wished to have been united. His miscellaneous works were collected and published in two volumes, by his friend, Charles Gildon.

performance, or out of apprehension of the censure of an ill-natured and ill-judging age. For criticism is now become mere hangman's work, and meddles only with the faults of authors;' nay, the critick is disgusted less with their absurdities, than excellence, and you cannot displease him more than in leaving him little room for his malice, in your correctness and perfection: though that indeed is what he never allows any man; for, like the bed of Procustes, they stretch or cut off an author to its length. These spoilers of Parnassus are a just excuse for concealing the name, since most of their malice is levelled more at the person than the thing and as a sure mark of their judgment, they will extol to the skies the anonymous work of a person they will not allow to write common sense.2

But this consideration of our modern criticks has led me astray, and made me insensibly deviate from the subject before me; the modesty, or caution of the anonymous translators of the following work. Whatever the motive of concealing their names may be, I shall not determine; but it

We have nearly the same complaint in the Epistle to Lord Radcliffe. See p. 272.

2

Pope, by publishing his ESSAY ON MAN anonymously, extorted praise from some of those whom he had personally offended, (to whom he sent his poem as a present before publication,) who, if they had not been thus entrapped, would probably not have allowed the work

common sense.

is certain, nothing could more contribute to make a perfect version of Lucian, than a confederacy of many men of parts and learning to do him justice. It seems a task too hard for any one to undertake; the burden would indeed be insupportable, unless we did what the French have done in some of their translations,-allow twenty years to perfect the work, and bestow all the brightest intervals, the most sprightly hours, to polish and finish the work.*

But this has not been the fate of our author hitherto; for Lucian, that is the sincere example of Attick eloquence, as Grævius says of him, is only a mass of solecism, and mere vulgarisms, in Mr. Spence. I do not think it worth my while to rake into the filth of so scandalous a version; nor had I vouchsafed so much as to take notice of it, had it not been so gross an affront to the mémory of Lucian, and so great a scandal to our nation. D'Ablancourt has taken a great deal of pains to furnish this intruder into print, with Lucian, in a language more known to him than Greek; nay, he has left him not one crabbed idiotism to study for, since he has admirably cloathed him in a garb more familiar to the moderns, still

* This and two or three other passages shew, that this Life was written hastily, and that it had not been carefully revised by the author.

Ferrand Spence, who published a translation of Lucian's Dialogues in four volumes, 8vo. in 1684.

keeping the sense of his author in view. But in spite of all these helps, these leading-strings were not sufficient to keep Mr. Spence from falling to the ground every step he made; while he makes him speak in the style and language of a JackPudding, not a master of eloquence, admired for it through all the ages since he wrote. But too much of this trifler.

I have said enough already of the version of the learned Dr. Mayne, to shew my approbation of it; but it is only a select parcel of Lucian's Dialogues, which pleased him most, but far from the whole. As for any other translation, if there be any such in our language, it is what I never saw, and suppose it must be antiquated, or of so inferior a degree, as not even to rival Spence.

4

The present translation, as far as I can judge by what I have seen, is no way inferior to Ablancourt's, and in many things is superior. It has indeed the advantage of appearing in a language more strong and expressive than French, and by the hands of gentlemen who perfectly understand him and their own language.

This has brought me to say a word or two about translation in general; in which no nation might

• I have more than once had occasion to remark, that our author was not very conversant with the writers of the beginning of his own century.-A translation of select Dialogues of Lucian by Francis Hickes, was published in quarto in 1634, to which was prefixed the Life of Lucian, written by Thomas Hickes, a son of the translator.