"he fhould poffefs double that fum." Here a material part of the original idea is omitted; no lefs than that very circumftance upon which the omen turned, viz. that the entrails of the victim were double.

ANALOGOUS to this liberty of adding to or retrenching from the ideas of the original, is the liberty which a translator may take of correcting what appears to him a careless or inaccurate expreffion of the original, where that inaccuracy feems materially to affect the fenfe. Tacitus fays, when Tiberius was entreated to take upon him the government of the empire, Ille variè differebat, de magnitudine imperii, fuâ modestiá. An. 1. 1. C. II. Here the word modeftia is improperly applied. The author could not mean to say, H 2 that

that Tiberius difcourfed to the people about his own modefty. He wished that his difcourfe fhould feem to proceed from modefty; but he did not talk to them about his modefty. D'Alembert faw this impropriety, and he has therefore well translated the paffage: "Il ré"pondit par des difcours généraux fur "fon peu de talent, et fur la grandeur " de l'empire."

A fimilar impropriety, not indeed affecting the sense, but offending against the dignity of the narrative, occurs in that paffage where Tacitus relates, that Auguftus, in the decline of life, after the death of Drufus, appointed his fon Germanicus to the command of eight legions on the Rhine, At, bercule, Germanicum Drufo ortum octo apud Rhe

num

num legionibus impofuit, An. 1. 1. c. 3. There was no occafion here for the hiftorian fwearing; and though, to render the paffage with strict fidelity, an English translator must have faid, "Auguftus, Egad, gave Germanicus the "fon of Drufus the command of eight "legions on the Rhine," we cannot hefitate to say, that the fimple fact is better announced without fuch embel, lishment,

CHAP. IV.

Of the freedom allowed in Poetical Tranflation.-Progress of Poetical Translation în England.-B. Fonfon, Holiday, Sandys, Fanshaw, Dryden.-Rofcommon's Essay on Tranflated Verfe.-Pope's Homer.

N the preceding chapter, in treating

IN the

of the liberty affumed by translators, of adding to, or retrenching from

the ideas of the original, feveral examples have been given, where that liberty has been affumed with propriety both

in

in profe compofition and in poetry. In the latter, it is more peculiarly allow able. "I conceive it," fays Sir John Denham, "a vulgar error in translating

66

poets, to affect being fidus interpres.

"Let that care be with them who deal "in matters of fact or matters of faith; "but whofoever aims at it in poetry,

as he attempts what is not required,

"fo fhall he never perform what he

1

attempts; for it is not his business

"alone to tranflate language into lan

guage, but poefie into poefie; and "poefie is of fo fubtle a spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a

દ

new fpirit is not added in the trans

fufion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum.' Denham's Preface to the 2d book of Virgil's Æneid.

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