226 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
arts, not merely to practise, which is pretty generally allowed, hut 
also to enjoy, as practised by others. The crown of poetical trans- 
lators in English literature, so long worn by Pope, is now 
transferred to Shelley. Those who despise the Iliad, or the Hymn 
to Mercury, must be content to have their judgment as critics 
questioned. Those who speak evil of the art in which two such 
poets have laboured to excel, may fairly be challenged to defend 
their strictures with modesty. 
The requisites of a good verse translation are, first of all, good 
verse ; secondly, good scholarship ; thirdly, good taste ; the last, 
including a great many requirements. The first is most often 
neglected at the present day ; the second was very deficient in the 
translations of the last century. The verse must be English in 
form ; it is safest to follow accredited models from the English 
poets. In drama, for the dialogue, nothing but the dramatic verse 
of the great Elizabethans and their successors appears admissible. 
When the original rises to be poetical, in the higher sense, the 
translator must rise with it ; but he must write good verse always. 
A translation which is good in point of scholarship must give the 
meaning and force of each sentence, and even of each word ; but 
must not for that purpose transgress the laws of the English 
language, or of good taste. When it becomes necessary to sacrifice 
something, the grammar, that is, the form of construction of the 
sentence, should go \ not the force of the separate words, not even 
their order, if that order be at all significant. In point of meaning, 
the translator had better add no ornament of his own, not even by 
way of compensation for the loss of beauties in the original which 
have unavoidably disappeared in the process of translation. But 
he may, nay must, endeavour to supply the place of the march and 
music of the sound of his author's verse by making his own verses 
sound as well as possible in English ears, with the help of all that 
he can master, in the way of measure and music, of what has been 
taught him by the English poets. On the other hand, he need not 
vex himself overmuch by the unlikeness of the forms of modern 
poetry to those of ancient poetry, now irrecoverably lost. The 
genius of true poetry is independent of dialect, and passes through 
all ages of time. 
