Recapitulation. 315 



every other kind of writing tlie ancients have left 

 us models which all succeeding ages have labour- 

 ed to imitate; but transkition may justly be 

 claimed by the moderns as their own." — The 

 Greeks, so far as we know, achieved nothing 

 worthy of notice in this department of literary 

 labour. The Romans, who confessed themselves 

 the scholars of the Greeks, made a few versions 

 of those writings which they followed as mo- 

 dels * ; but it does not appear that any of their 

 writers grew eminent by transkition; and, indeed, 

 it was probably more frequent to ti'anslate for 

 private exercise or amusement than for fame. 



For three centuries past the art of translation 

 has been gradually gaining ground throughout 

 the literary world, both in frequency and ele- 

 gance f . But the extension of this art, in both 



'■'' Every man in Rome who aspired to the praise of literature 

 thought it necessary to learn Greek; and therefore stood in little 

 need of translations. Translation, however, was not wholly 

 neglected. Dramatic poems could be understood by the people 

 in no languace but their own : and the Romans were sometimes' 

 entertained with the tragedies of Euripides, and the comedies of 

 Menander. Other works were sometimes atteaipted : in an old 

 scholiast there is mention of a Latin Iliad, and we have not 

 wholly lost Cicero's version of the poem of Aratus. — Idler, ii. 

 No. 68J- -Kiiinpm 5^1^ 'i^ ' 



f Chaucer, the father of English poetry, was^'aHiong thtf first 

 translators into our language. He left a version of .Boethius On 

 the Cqniforts qf Philosophy, which, though dull, prosaic, and in- 

 elegant, held, at that early period, a conspicuous place. Some 

 improvement in the art of translation was made in the reign of 

 queen Elizabeth ; but still any thing like freedom and ekgance 

 was seldom asttftined. It waa not till towards the close of the 

 seventeetith "qentury that<thi§ .artbagan to be geuerally under- 

 stood, and its proper principles reduced to practice. It is un- 



