I PREFA CE. F a man should undertake to translate Pindar word for word, it would be thought that one mad-man had translated another; as may appear, when he that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing feems more raving. And fure, rhyme, without the addition of wit, and the spirit of poetry (quod nequeo monftrare & fentio tantum) would but make it ten times more distracted than it is in profe. We must confider in Pindar the great difference of time betwixt his age and ours, which changes, as in pictures, at least the colours of poetry; the no less difference betwixt the religions and customs of our countries; and a thousand particularities of places, perfons, and manners, which do but confusedly appear to our eyes at so great a distance. And lastly (which were enough alone for my purpose) we must confider that our ears are strangers to the mufick of his numbers, which sometimes (especially in fongs and odes) almost without any thing else, makes an excellent poet; for though the grammarians and criticks have laboured to reduce his verses into regular feet and meafures (as they have also those of the Greek and Latin comedies) yet in effect they are little better than profe to our ears. And I would gladly know what applause our best pieces of English poefy could expect from a Frenchman or Italian, if converted faithfully, and word for word, into French or Italian profe. And when we have confidered all this, we must needs confefs, that after all these losses sustained by Pindar, all we can add to him by our wit or invention (not deferting still his subject) is not like to make him a richer man than he was in his own country. This is in some meafure to be applied to all translations; and the not obferving of it, is the cause that all which ever I yet faw, are so much inferior to their originals. The like happens too in pictures, from the fame root of exact imitation; which, being a vile and unworthy h kind of fervitude, is incapable of producing any thing good or noble. I have seen originals, both in painting and poefy, much more beautiful than their natural objects; I. jects; but I never faw a copy better than the original: which indeed cannot be otherwise; for, men resolving in no case to shoot beyond the mark, it is a thousand to one if they shoot not short of it. It does not at all trouble me that the grammarians perhaps will not fuffer this libertine way of rendering foreign authors to be called Tranflation; for I am not so much enamoured of the name Tranflator, as not to wish rather to be something better, though it want yet a name. speak not so much all this, in defence of my manner of tranflating, or imitating (or what other title they please) the two enfuing Odes of Pindar; for that would not deserve half these words; as by this occafion to rectify the opinion of divers men upon this matter. The Pfalms of David (which I believe to have been in their original, to the Hebrews of his time, though not to our Hebrews of Buxtorfius's making, the most exalted pieces of poesy) are a great example of what I have faid; all the tranflators of which (even Mr. Sands himself; for in despite of popular error, I will be bold not to except him) for this very reason, that they have not fought to fupply the loft excellencies of another language with new ones in their own, are so far from doing honour, or at least justice, to that divine poet, that methinks they revile him worse than Shimei. And Buchanan himself (though much the best of them all, and indeed a great person) comes in my opinion no less short of David, than his country does of Judea. Upon this ground I have, in these two Odes of Pindar, taken, left out, and added, what I please; nor make it so much my aim to let the reader know precisely what he spoke, as what was his way and manner of speaking, which has not been yet (that I know of) introduced into English, though it be the noblest and highest kind of writing in verse; and which might, perhaps, be put into the lift of Pancirolus, among the loft inventions of antiquity. This effay is but to try how it will look in an English habit: for which experiment, I have chofen one of his Olympic, and another of his Nemæan Odes; which are as followeth. |