from the original, to run divisions on the ground-work
as he pleases. Such is Mr Cowley's practice in turning two odes of
Pindar, and one of Horace, into English.

"Concerning the first of these methods, our master, Horace, has given
us this caution--

'Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres'------

'Nor word for word too faithfully translate,'

as the Earl of Roscommon has excellently rendered it. 'Too faithfully
is, indeed, pedantically.' It is a faith like that which proceeds
from superstition, blind and zealous. Take it in the expression of
Sir John Denham to Sir Richard Fanshaw, on his version of the _Pastor
Fido_--

'That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word, and line by line:
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations, and translators too;
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.'

"It is almost impossible to translate verbally, and well, at the same
time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often
expresses that in one word, which either the barbarity or the
narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. It is frequent,
also, that the conceit is couched in some expression which will be
lost in English--

'Aque iidem venti vela fidemque ferent.'

What poet of our nation is so happy as to express this thought
literally in English, and to strike wit, or almost sense, out of it?

"In short, the verbal copier is encumbered with so many difficulties
at once, that he can never disentangle himself from them all. He is
to consider, at the same time, the thought of his author, and his
words, and to find out the counterpart to each in another language;
and besides this, he is to confine himself to the compass of numbers,
and the slavery of rhyme. It is much like dancing on ropes with
fettered legs; a man may shun a fall by using caution, but the
gracefulness of motion is not to be expected; and when we have said
the best of it, it is but a foolish task, for no sober man would put
himself into a danger for the applause of escaping without breaking
his neck. We see Ben Jonson could not avoid obscurity in his literal
translation of Horace, attempted in the same compass of l