anslations of
the eighteenth century, for example, were accompanied by long prefaces,
containing, in addition to the elaborate paraphernalia of contemporary
scholarship, detailed discussion of the best rules for putting a foreign
classic into English. Almost every possible phase of the art had been
broached in one place and another before the century ended. In its last
decade there appeared the first attempt in English at a complete and
detailed treatment of the theory of translation as such, Tytler's _Essay
on the Principles of Translation_.

From the sixteenth-century theory of translation, so much of which is
incidental and uncertain in expression, it is a pleasure to come to the
deliberate, reasoned statements, unmistakable in their purpose and
meaning, of the earlier critics of our period, men like Denham, Cowley,
and Dryden. In contrast to the mass of unrelated individual opinions
attached to the translations of Elizabeth's time, the criticism of the
seventeenth century emanates, for the most part, from a small group of
men, who supply standards for lesser commentators and who, if they do
not invariably agree with one another, are yet thoroughly familiar with
one another's views. The field of discussion also has narrowed
considerably, and theory has gained by becoming less scattering.
Translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed certain
new developments, the most marked of which was the tendency among
translators who aspired to the highest rank to confine their efforts to
verse renderings of the Greek and Latin classics. A favorite remark was
that it is the greatest poet who suffers most in being turned from one
language into another. In spite of this, or perhaps for this reason, the
common ambition was to undertake Virgil, who was generally regarded as
the greatest of epic poets, and attempts to translate at least a part of
the _Aeneid_ were astonishingly frequent. As early as 1658 the Fourth
Book is described as "translated ... in our day at least ten times into
English."[372] Horace came next in popularity; by the beginning of the
eighteenth century, according to one translator, he had been
"translated, paraphrased, or criticized on by persons of all conditions
and both sexes."[373] As the century progressed, Homer usurped the place
formerly occupied by Virgil as the object of the most ambitious effort
and the center of discussion. But there were other translations of the
classics. Cooke, dedi