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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	greek_a	latin_a	translate_v	3,558	5	9.2013	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36697	Sylvæ, or, The second part of Poetical miscellanies	Dryden, John, 1631-1700.	1685 (1685)	Wing D2379; ESTC R1682	87,943	350

two Authors are equally sweet yet there is a great distinction to be made in sweetness as in that of Sugar and that of Honey I can make the difference more plain by giving you if it be worth knowing my own method of proceeding in my Translations out of four several Poets in this Volume Virgil Theocritus Lucretius and Horace In each of these before I undertook them I consider'd the Genius and distinguishing Character of my Author I look'd on Virgil as a succinct and grave Majestick Writer one who weigh'd not only every thought but every Word and Syllable Who was still aiming to crowd his sence into as narrow a compass as possibly he cou'd for which reason he is so very Figurative that he requires I may almost say a Grammar apart to construe him His Verse is every where sounding the very thing in your Ears whose sence it bears Yet the Numbers are perpetually varied to increase the delight of the Reader so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together On the contrary Ovid and Claudian though they Write in Styles differing from each other yet have each of them but one sort of Musick in their Verses All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five Lines and then he begins again in the same tenour perpetually closing his sence at the end of a Verse and that Verse commonly which they call golden or two Substantives and two Adjectives with a Verb betwixt them to keep the peace Ovid with all his sweetness has as little variety of Numbers and sound as he He is always as it were upon the Hand-gallop and his Verse runs upon Carpet ground He avoids like the other all Synalaepha's or cutting off one Vowel when it comes before another in the following word So that minding only smoothness he wants both Variety and Majesty But to return to Virgil though he is smooth where smoothness is requir'd yet he is so far from affecting it that he seems rather to disdain it Frequently makes use of Synalaepha's and concludes his sence in the middle of his Verse He is every where above conceipts of Epigrammatick Wit and gross Hyperboles He maintains Majesty in the midst of plainess he shines but glares not and is stately without ambition which is the vice of Lucan I drew my definition of Poetical Wit from my particular consideration of him For propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him and where they are proper they will be delightful Pleasure follows of necessity as the effect does the cause and therefore is not to be put into the definition This exact propriety of Virgil I particularly regarded as a great part of his Character but must confess to my shame that I have not been able to Translate any part of him so well as to make him appear wholly like himself For where the Original is close no Version can reach it in the same compass Hannibal Caro's in the Italian is the nearest the most Poetical and the most Sonorous of any Translation of the Aeneids yet though he takes the advantage of blank Verse he commonly allows two Lines for one of Virgil and does not always hit his sence Tasso tells us in his Letters that Sperone Speroni a great Italian Wit who was his Contemporary observ'd of Virgil and Tully that the Latin Oratour endeavour'd to imitate the Copiousness of Homer the Greek Poet and that the Latine Poet made it his business to reach the conciseness of Demosthenes the Greek Oratour Virgil therefore being so very sparing of his words and leaving so much to be imagin'd by the Reader can never be translated as he ought in any modern Tongue To make him Copious is to alter his Character and to Translate him Line for Line is impossible because the Latin is naturally a more succinct Language than either the Italian Spanish French or even than the English which by reason of its Monosyllables is far the most compendious of them Virgil is much the closest of any Roman Poet and the Latin Hexameter has more Feet than the English Heroick Besides all this an Author has the choice of his own thoughts and words which a Translatour has not he is confin'd by the sence of the Inventor to those expressions which are the nearest to it So that Virgil studying brevity and having the command of his own Language cou'd bring those words into a narrow compass which a Translatour cannot render without Circumlocutions In short they who have call'd him the torture of Grammarians might also have call'd him the plague of Translatours for he seems to have studied not to be Translated I own that endeavouring to turn his Nisus and Euryalus as close as I was able I have perform'd that Episode too literally that giving more scope to Mezentius and Lausus that Version which has more of the Majesty of Virgil has less of his conciseness and all that I can promise for my self is only that I have done both better than Ogleby and perhaps as well as Caro. So that methinks I come like a Malefactor to make a Speech upon the Gallows and to warn all other Poets by my sad example from the Sacrilege of Translating Virgil. Yet by considering him so carefully as I did before my attempt I have made some faint resemblance of him and had I taken more time might possibly have succeeded better but never so well as to have satisfied my self He who excells all other Poets in his own Language were it possible to do him right must appear above them in our Tongue which as my Lord Roscomon justly observes approaches nearest to the Roman in its Majesty Nearest indeed but with a vast interval betwixt them There is an inimitable grace in Virgils words and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so unexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force this Diction of his I must once again say is never to be Copied and since it cannot he will appear but lame in the best Translation The turns of his Verse his breakings his propriety his numbers and his gravity I have as far imitated as the poverty of our Language and the hastiness of my performance wou'd allow I may seem sometimes to have varied from his sence but I think the greatest variations may be fairly deduc'd from him and where I leave his Commentators it may be I understand him better At least I Writ without consulting them in many places But two particular Lines in Mezentius and Lausus I cannot so easily excuse they are indeed remotely ally'd to Virgils sence but they are too like the trifling tenderness of Ovid and were Printed before I had consider'd them enough to alter them The first of them I have forgotten and cannot easily retrieve because the Copy is at the Press The second is this When Lausus dy'd I was already slain This appears pretty enough at first sight but I am convinc'd

this Confession I am not y●t so secure from that passion but tha● I want my Authors Antidotes against it He has given the truest and most Philosophical account both of the Disease and Remedy which I ever found in any Author For which reasons I Translated him But it will be ask'd why I turn'd him into this luscious English for I will not give it a worse word instead of an answer I wou'd ask again of my Supercilious Adversaries whether I am not bound when I Translate an Author to do him all the right I can and to Translate him to the best advantage If to mince his meaning which I am satisfi'd was honest and instructive I had either omitted some part of what he said or taken from the strength of his expression I certainly had wrong'd him and that freeness of thought and words being thus cashier'd in my hands he had no longer been Lucretius If nothing of this kind be to be read Physicians must not study Nature Anatomies must not be seen and somewhat I cou'd say of particular passages in Books which to avoid prophaness I do not name But the intention qualifies the act and both mine and my Authors were to instruct as well as please T is most certain that barefac'd Bawdery is the poorest pretence to wit imaginable If I shou'd say otherwise I shou'd have two great authorities against me The one is the Essay on Poetry which I publickly valued before I knew the Author of it and with the commendation of which my Lord Roscomon so happily begins his Essay on Translated Verse The other is no less than our admir'd Cowley who says the same thing in other words For in his Ode concerning Wit he writes thus of it Much less can that have any place At which a Virgin hides her Face Such dross the fire must purge away 't is just The Author blush there where the Reader must Here indeed Mr. Cowley goes farther than the Essay for he asserts plainly that obscenity has no place in Wit the other only says 't is a poor pretence to it or an ill sort of Wit which has nothing more to support it than bare-fac'd Ribaldry which is both unmannerly in it self and fulsome to the Reader But neither of these will reach my case For in the first place I am only the Translatour not the Inventor so that the heaviest part of the censure falls upon Lucretius before it reaches me in the next place neither he nor I have us'd the grossest words but the cleanliest Metaphors we cou'd find to palliate the broadness of the meaning and to conclude have carried the Poetical part no farther than the Philosophical exacted There is one mistake of mine which I will not ●ay to the Printers charge who has enough to answer for in false pointings 't is in the word Viper I wou'd have the Verse run thus The Scorpion Love must on the wound be bruis'd There are a sort of blundering half-witted people who make a great deal of noise about a Verbal slip though Horace wou'd instruct them better in true Criticism Non ego paucis offendor maculis quas aut incuria fudit aut humana parùm cavit natura True judgment in Poetry like that in Painting takes a view of the whole together whether it be good or not and where the beauties are more than the Faults concludes for the Poet against the little Iudge 't is a sign that malice is hard driven when 't is forc'd to lay hold on a Word or Syllable to arraign a Man is one thing and to cavil at him is another In the midst of an ill natur'd Generation of Scriblers there is always Iustice enough left in Mankind to protect good Writers And they too are oblig'd both by humanity and interest to espouse each others cause against false Criticks who are the common Enemies This last consideration puts me in mind of what I owe to the Ingenious and Learned Translatour of Lucretius I have not here design'd to rob him of any part of that commendation which he has so justly acquir'd by the whole Author whose Fragments only fall to my Portion What I have now perform'd is no more than I intended above twenty years ago The ways of our Translation are very different he follows bim more closely than I have done which became an Interpreter of the whole Poem I take more liberty because it best suited with my design which was to make him as pleasing as I could He had been too voluminous had he us'd my method in so long a work and I had certainly taken his had I made it my business to Translate the whole The preference then is justly his and I joyn with Mr. Evelyn in the confession of it with this additional advantage to him that his Reputation is already establish'd in this Poet mine is to make its Fortune in the World If I have been any where obscure in following our common Author or if Lucretius himself is to be condemnd I refer my self to his excellent Annotations which I have often read and always with some new pleasure My Preface begins already to swell upon me and looks as if I were afraid of my Reader by so tedious a bespeaking of him and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands but the Greek Gentleman shall quickly be dispatch'd because I have more business with the Roman That which distinguishes Theocritus from all other Poets both Greek and Latin and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues is the inimitable tenderness of his passions and the natural expression of them in words so becoming of a Pastoral A simplicity shines through all he writes he shows his Art and Learning by disguising both His Shepherds never rise above their Country Education in their complaints of Love There is the same difference betwixt him and Virgil as there is betwixt Tasso's Aminta and the Pastor Fido of Guarini Virgils Shepherds are too well read in the Philosophy of Epicurus and of Plato and Guarini's seem to have been bred in Courts But Theocritus and Tasso have taken theirs from Cottages and Plains It was said of Tasso in relation to his similitudes Mai esce del Bosco That he never departed from the Woods that is all his comparisons were taken from the Country The same may be said of our Theocritus he is softer than Ovid he touches the passions more delicately and performs all this out of his own Fond without diving into the Arts and Sciences for a supply Even his Dorick Dialect has an incomparable sweetness in its Clownishness like a fair Shepherdess in her Country Russet talking in a Yorkshire Tone This was impossible for Virgil to imitate because the severity of the Roman Language denied him that advantage Spencer has endeavour'd it in his Shepherds Calendar but neither will it succeed in English for which reason I forbore to attempt it For Theocritus writ to Sicilians who spoke that Dialect and I