happens to come into my head, were it not for the advantage of my paper to place before them the circumstance which put me upon this consideration. The other day, during my last visit to London, as I was reading the paper in the coffee-house, a person, that had very much the appearance of a compositor, entered the room, and put into my hands a packet directed to SIMON OLIVE-BRANCH. Upon opening it, I found it to contain proposals for a new translation of the Æneid of Virgil, together with one or two specimens, on which, with some compliment to the clearness of my judgement, I was requested to pronounce my opinion. As I was not given to understand where I might find the author, or how I might privately convey to him my sentiments, I concluded him to be among my readers, and that, accordingly, he chose to be conversed with through the channel of my paper. I am pleased with this mode of consulting me, and confess I would always choose rather, on a grave subject, to converse with my pen than with my lips; for, as it is my custom to be long in collecting myself, before I can deliver my thoughts with ease, I have no chance in an oral contest with the declaimers of the present hour.

The literary present, of which I have been speaking, was the more agreeable to me, as, on the principles on which I reason, in regard to the general character of any particular period, it exhibits, as far as it goes, a testimony to the honour of the times; for I consider that a spirit and taste in poetical labours, as long as they hold a place in our minds, are a proof that we are not yet abandoned by that vigorous relish, and that keen sensibility, which belong to a lively and sound organization, and which, in the history of all nations, I perceive, do gradually desert them, when they have passed the consummation of

their fortunes, and begin to measure back their steps through that returning scale, by which all human greatness is humbled.

It is with nations, as it is with individuals: in the florid stages of youth, when the spring of the mind is unworn, and the spirits and health are sound, the resources of real life are hardly enough for the exercise of its powers; the bounds of truth and existence are broken, and the stores of fiction are called in to supply the deficiency. As age advances, the mind narrows itself to the range of actual objects, and finds a sufficient exertion in the common topics and occurrences of life. At length the season of decay arrives, and the date of a more limited activity: what remains of force and vigour, is expended on the means of preservation; and existence itself is object sufficient for the efforts of extreme decrepitude. While the works, therefore, of imagination, preserve their esteem in this country, and the higher Poetry has still a train of votaries sufficient to maintain her dignity, I consider that ominous moment at some distance, whence the period of our national decay is to be dated.

The close of the eighteenth century will have produced English translations of two of the most celebrated poems in the world, which, if we refuse to admit them as testimonies to the genius of the age, we must at least accept as proofs of a yet-prevailing taste for the sublimer kinds of poetry. If there be genius, however, in catching the spirit of a great original writer, in transfusing that spirit into a new language; in sustaining a correspondent dignity of expression, and elevation of manner, through so different a medium; in taking to pieces the whole structure of his language, and building it up again with new materials, which materials we have also to

shape and adjust to the purposes of our new edifice; if there be genius in all this, there is genius in the work of an accomplished translator. It has been sensibly observed, that to comprehend perfectly the extent and value of another's abilities, a portion of those abilities was necessary in the judge. "Ut enim de pictore, sculptore, fictore, nisi artifex judicare, ita nisi sapiens non potest perspicere sapientem." If, therefore, simply to qualify us to taste and appreciate them in others, such a participation be necessary, a much larger share, surely, must be required to represent them with fidelity and justice. Were it asked, therefore, what qualifications were requisite for a translator of Homer, nothing less could be demanded, than a perfect knowledge of the two languages with which he is concerned, and a sympathy of feeling and conception with the great original.

An Englishman has a stronger interest in asserting the dignity and difficulty of translation, than the native of any other country, inasmuch as his own language contains the most arduous attempts and most successful specimens. The French, it is true, have not been insensible to the advantages to be derived from this direction of literary industry: they understood that the deficiencies of a language were only to be ascertained by comparing its strength with that of others: but together with what profit they derived from the labours of translation, they made also this unwelcome discovery, that there was something of constraint and formality in the genius of their language; something court-bred and precise in its character and complexion, which rendered it of a cast unfit for the great representations of general nature, and the sublime simplicity of the higher poetry. We have nothing of the Greek and Roman labour in this kind, of any importance, unless we can

agree that some of the plays of Terence are versions of those of Menander; a notion taken up too much upon trust, like a thousand others of a similar nature. The Iliad of Salvini is without the first pretension of poetry, its power of giving pleasure; I shall therefore say nothing upon it, for where there is nothing to invite a reader, there can be nothing to provoke a critic.

In England, the spirit of translation has extended itself over the whole province of ancient literature; an effect attributable to two causes-a genuine and prevailing relish of these precious models, and the pliancy, vigour, and abundance of our language. In that spirit of commerce, which is our national characteristic, we have extended our traffic in words to every corner of the globe; and have carried on this trade with the dead and the living, to a greater degree than any other country: we have not only drawn immediately from the Greeks and the Romans, but, in the circulations of commerce, we have made other countries our carriers, and have imported, in foreign bottoms, a variety of ancient idioms, and classical derivations. Out of such a fund of materials, and such a choice of combinations, a style is furnished us for every occasion, and for objects the most opposite in their nature and demands. We have an arsenal replete with all kinds of stores; and whether we are to depend upon our artillery or our muskets, whether we fight on horseback or on foot, we may be armed for either contest.

There is something, however, in the nature of translation, which discourages genius, by throwing a veil before that perfection which it loves to contemplate. We can propose nothing to ourselves but second praise, and for this we have to struggle with a band of difficulties which it is not even in the power

of genius to remove. While language is of so local and complexional a nature; while words are not merely representative of things, but represent also the feelings which accompany them, which feelings vary with the manners and customs of different nations and ages, more or less disappointment will always attend upon the labour of translation. It is a task with which the world is never satisfied. To content us, it must suit our present tastes and complexions, while it is required to be true and faithful to its original. These merits are rarely consistent with each other; the hero of one country is the savage of another; and what in one age is simplicity, in another is vulgarity.

The heroes of the Iliad, to modern conceptions of courage, are a group of bullies and bravadoes: if it be nature, it is nature stripped of its humanities; and a mind must be lost to feeling, or blinded by its partialities, to draw pleasure from such a contemplation. Veiled in the obscurity of a language but half understood, and surrounded by a cohort of sonorous words, and noble images; viewed through so reconciling a medium, the descriptions and characters of Homer in a great measure lose their natural effect, are carried to a distance that levels their obliquities, or regarded behind a skreen that throws an advantageous shade upon their deformities. It may be re

marked-too, that, in the perusal of a strange language, the mind insensibly drops a portion of its native habits and sentiments, and in some degree accommodates itself to the spirit of those new objects which are presented before it: but when customs and manners, the most abhorrent from our nature and feelings, are exhibited in all the familiarity of translation in the dress of our fathers and brothers; when they set foot, as it were, on our very hearths