tury or two ago the greatest wits were known
to have pathetically lamented, that the writers, of whose merits I have
been speaking, were handed down to us in so mutilated a condition. Now
it seems very probable, that, if their works were totally annihilated,
it would scarcely call forth a sigh from the refined geniuses of the
present age. It is certainly very possible to carry the passion for
antiquity to a ridiculous extreme. No man can reasonably deny, that it
is by us only that the true system of the universe has been ascertained,
and that we have made very valuable improvements upon many of the arts.
No man can question that some of our English poets have equalled the
ancients in sublimity, and that, to say the least, our neighbours, the
French, have emulated the elegance of their composition in a manner,
that is very far indeed from contempt. From these concessions however we
are by no means authorised to infer their inutility.

But I shall be told that in the first revival of letters the study of
the ancient languages might indeed be very proper; but since that time
we have had so many excellent truncations of every thing they contain,
that to waste the time, and exhaust the activity of our youth in the
learning of Latin and Greek, is to very little purpose indeed.
Translation! what a strange word! To me I confess it appears the most
unaccountable invention, that ever entered into the mind of man. To
distil the glowing conceptions, and to travesty the beautiful language
of the ancients, through the medium of a language estranged to all its
peculiarities and all its elegancies. The best thoughts and expressions
of an author, those that distinguish one writer from another, are
precisely those that are least capable of being translated. And who are
the men we are to employ in this promising business? Original genius
disdains the unmeaning drudgery. A mind that has one feature resembling
the ancients, will scarcely stoop to be their translator. The persons
then, to whom the performance must be committed, are persons of cool
elegance. Endowed with a little barren taste, they must be inanimate
enough to tread with laborious imbecility in the footsteps of another.
They must be eternally incapable of imbibing the spirit, and glowing
with the fire of their original. But we shall seldom come off so well as
this. The generality of translators are either on the one hand mere
pedants and dealers in words, who, understanding t