diciously given to Hope in this place; for a languid or a languishing hope was already dying, and needed not fo powerful a host of murderers to lay it, as Abfence, Jealoufy, and Difdain.-In short, the latter translation appears to me to be on the whole of much inferior merit to the former. I have remarked, that Motteux excels his rival chiefly in the translation of those poems that are of a graver caft. But perhaps he is cenfurable for having thrown too much gravity into the poems that are interspersed in this work, as Smollet is blameable on the oppofite account, of having given them too much the air of burlesque. In the fong which Don Quixote composed while he was doing penance in the Sierra-Morena, beginning Arboles, Yerbas y Plantas, every stanza of which ends with Del Tobofa, the the author intended, that the compofition fhould be quite characteristic of its author, a ludicrous compound of gravity and abfurdity. In the translation of Motteux there is perhaps too much gravity; but Smollet has rendered the compofition altogether burlefque. The fame remark is applicable to the fong of Antonio, beginning Yo sé, Olalla, que me adoras, and to many of the other poems. On the whole, I am inclined to think, that the version of Motteux is by far the best we have yet seen of the Romance of Cervantes; and that if corrected in its licentious abbreviations and enlargements, and in fome other particulars which I have noticed in the courfe of this comparison, we should have nothing to defire fuperior to it in the way of translation. CHAP. CHAP. XIII. Other Characteristics of Compofition, which render Tranflation difficult.-Antiquated Terms-New Terms-Verba ardentia. -Simplicity of Thought and Expreffion -In Profe-In Poetry.-Naiveté in the Latter,- Chaulieu- Parnell - La Fontaine.-Series of Minute Diftinctions marked by Characteristic Terms.-Strada. Florid Style and Vague Expreffion. -Pliny's Natural Hiftory. IN N the two preceding chapters I have treated pretty fully of what I have confidered as a principal difficulty in translation, the permutation of idioms. I fhall in this chapter touch upon feveral other characteristics of composition, which, in proportion as they are found in original works, ferve greatly to enhance the difficulty of doing complete justice to them in a translation. 1. THE poets, in all languages, have a licence peculiar to themselves, of employing a mode of expreffion very remote from the diction of profe, and still more from that of ordinary fpeech. Under this licence, it is customary for them to ufe antiquated terms, to invent new ones, and to employ a glowing and rapturous phrafeology, or what Cicero terms Verba ardentia. To do juftice to thefe peculiarities in a translation, by adopting fimilar terms and phrafes, will be found extremely difficult; 4 cult; yet, without fuch affimilation, the translation presents no juft copy of the original. It would require no ordinary skill to transfuse into another language the thoughts of the following paffages, in a fimilar species of phrafeology: Antiquated Terms: For Nature crefcent doth not grow alone In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,! Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves thee now, The virtue of his will SHAK. Hamlet, Act 1, New Terms: So over many a tract Of heaven they march'd, and many a province wide, Tenfold the length of this terrene: at last |