world, than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the reader: the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him; ; every time he takes it up, he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only, have a gloss upon them at the first, which time wears off; the works of judgment are like the diamond, the more they are polished, the more lustre they receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's ENEIS, and Marini's ADONE. And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say, that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes :

Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo.

Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree, according to my motto in the title-page,-sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis : and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like that of the Peers, of which your Lordship is so great an ornament.

Without this ambition which I own, of desiring to please the judices natos, I could never have been able to have done any thing at this age, when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men. Yet Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement; when he was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him. And we find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour: nec dona

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moror: for Dampier has informed us in his Voyages, that the air of the country which produces gold, is never wholesome.

I had long since considered, that the way to please the best judges, is not to translate a poet literally; and Virgil least of any other. For his peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by the narrow compass of our heroick verse, unless I would make use of monosyllables only, and those clogged with consonants, which are the dead weight of our mother tongue. It is possible, I confess, though it rarely happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some examples of it I have seen. My first line of the ÆNEIS is not harsh: Arms, and the man I sing, who forc'd by Fate, &c. But a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius, made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech:

Nor could the world have, borne so fierce a flame:

where the many liquid consonants are placed so artfully, that they give a pleasing sound to the words, though they are all of one syllable. It is true, I have been sometimes forced upon it in other places of this work, but I never did it out of choice: I was either in haste, or Virgil gave me no occasion for the ornament of words; for it seldom happens but a monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and unharmonious. Philarchus, I remember, taxes

Balzac for placing twenty monosyllables in file, without one dissyllable betwixt them.

The way I have taken is not so strait as metaphrase, nor so loose as paraphrase; some things too I have omitted, and sometimes have added of my own. Yet the omissions, I hope, are but of circumstances, and such as would have no grace in English; and the additions, I also hope, are easily deduced from Virgil's sense.' They will seem (at least I have the vanity to think so,) not stuck into him, but growing out of him. He studies brevity more than any other poet; but he had the advantage of a language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space. We, and all the modern tongues, have more articles and pronouns, besides signs of tenses and cases, and other barbarities on which our speech is built, by the faults of our forefathers. The Romans founded theirs upon the Greek; and the Greeks, we know, were labouring many hundred years upon their language, before they brought it to perfection. They rejected all those signs, and cut off as many articles as they could spare, comprehending in one word what we are constrained to express in two; which is one reason why we cannot write so concisely as they have done. The word pater, for example, signifies not only a father, but your

5 Many of our author's additions, however, are not warranted by the original; and this perhaps is the greatest fault of his translation. See Mr. Spence's Observations at the end of this Discourse.

father, my father, his or her father, all included in a word.

This inconvenience is common to all modern tongues, and this alone constrains us to employ more words than the ancients needed. But having before observed that Virgil endeavours to be short, and at the same time elegant, I pursue the excellence, and forsake the brevity. For there he is like ambergris, a rich perfume, but of so close and glutinous a body, that it must be opened with inferior scents of musk or civet, or the sweetness will not be drawn out into another language.

:

On the whole matter, I thought fit to steer betwixt the two extremes of paraphrase and literal translation; to keep as near my author as I could, without losing all his graces, the most eminent of which are in the beauty of his words and those words, I must add, are always figurative. Such of these as would retain their elegance in our tongue, I have endeavoured to graff on it; but most of them are of necessity to be lost, because they will not shine in any but their own. Virgil has sometimes two of them in a line; but the scantiness of our heroick verse is not capable of receiving more than one; and that too must expiate for many others which have none. Such is the difference of the languages, or such my want of skill in choosing words. Yet I may presume to say, and I hope with as much reason as the French translator, that taking all the materials of this divine

author, I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak such English, as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age. I acknowledge, with Segrais, that I have not succeeded in this attempt according to my desire; yet I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I may be allowed to have copied the clearness, the purity, the easiness and the magnificence of his style. But I shall have occasion to speak farther on this subject before I end the Preface.

When I mentioned the Pindarick line, I should have added, that I take another licence in my verses; for I frequently make use of triplet rhymes, and for the same reason,-because they bound the sense. And therefore I generally join these two licences together, and make the last verse of the triplet a Pindarick; for besides the majesty which it gives, it confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would languish if it were lengthened into four. Spencer is my example for both these privileges of English verses; and Chapman has followed him in his translation of Homer. Mr. Cowley has given in to them after both; and all succeeding writers after him. I regard them now as the Magna Charta of heroick poetry; and am too much an Englishman to lose what my ancestors have gained for me. Let the French and Italians value themselves on their regularity; strength and elevation are our standard. I said before, and I repeat it, that the

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