of wit
and judgment, Denham and Waller,"[389] and in proof of his statements
puts side by side translations of the same passage by Phaer and Denham.
Later, in 1688, an anonymous writer recalls the work of Phaer and
Stanyhurst only to disparage it. Introducing his translation of Virgil,
"who has so long unhappily continued a stranger to tolerable English,"
he says that he has "observed how _Player_ and _Stainhurst_ of old ...
had murdered the most absolute of poets."[390] One dissenting note is
found in Robert Gould's lines prefixed to a 1687 edition of Fairfax's
_Godfrey of Bulloigne_.

See here, you dull translators, look with shame
Upon this stately monument of fame,
And to amaze you more, reflect how long
It is, since first 'twas taught the English tongue:
In what a dark age it was brought to light;
Dark? No, our age is dark, and that was bright.
Of all these versions which now brightest shine,
Most, Fairfax, are but foils to set off thine:
Ev'n Horace can't of too much justice boast,
His unaffected, easy style is lost:
And Ogilby's the lumber of the stall;
But thy translation does atone for all.[391]

Dryden, too, approves of Fairfax, considered at least as a metrist. He
includes him with Spenser among the "great masters of our language," and
adds, "many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he
derived the harmony of his numbers from _Godfrey of Bulloign_, which was
turned into English by Mr. Fairfax."[392] But even Dryden, who sometimes
saw beyond his own period, does not share the admiration which some of
his friends entertain for Chapman. "The Earl of Mulgrave and Mr.
Waller," he writes in the _Examen Poeticum_, "two of the best judges of
our age, have assured me that they could never read over the translation
of Chapman without incredible pleasure and extreme transport. This
admiration of theirs must needs proceed from the author himself, for the
translator has thrown him down as far as harsh numbers, improper
English, and a monstrous length of verse could carry him."[393]

In this satisfaction with their own country and their own era there
lurked certain dangers for seventeenth-century writers. The quality
becomes, as we shall see, more noticeable in the eighteenth century,
when the shackles which English taste laid upon original poetry were
imposed also upon translated verse. The theory of translation was
hampered in its development by the na