324 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS, 



my detractors that they have no reason to vilify my 

 circumlocution sometimes, when their most approved 

 Grecians, Homer's interpreters generally, hold him fit 

 to be so converted. Yet how much I differ, and with 

 what authority, let my impartial and judicial reader 

 judge. Always conceiving how pedantical and absurd 

 an affectation it is in the interpretation of any author 

 (much more of Homer) to turn him word for word, when 

 (according to Horace and other best lawgivers to trans- 

 lators) it is the part of every knowing and judicial inter- 

 preter not to follow the number and order of words, but 

 the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh 

 diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words and 

 such a style and form of oration as are most apt for the 

 language in which they are converted." Again in his 

 verses To the Reader, he speaks of 



" The ample transmigration to be shown 

 By nature-loving Poesy," 



and defends his own use of "needful periphrases," and 



says that " word for word " translation is to 



" Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender." 



" For even as different a production 

 Ask Greek and English : since, as they in sounds 

 And letters shun one form and unison. 

 So have their sense and elegancy hounds 

 In their distinguished natures, and require 

 Only a judgment to make both consent 

 In sense and elocution." 



There are two theories of translation, — literal para- 

 phrase and free reproduction. At best, the translation 

 of poetry is but an imitation of natural flowers in cam- 

 bric or wax ; and however much of likeness there may 

 be, the aroma, whose charm of indefinable suggestion in 

 the association of ideas is so powerful, is precisely what 

 is lost irretrievably. From where it lurked in the im- 

 mortal verse, a presence divined rather than ascertained, 



