y like imitation,
says in the preface to _Sylvae_: "I must acknowledge that I have many
times exceeded my commission; for I have both added and omitted, and
even sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my authors as no
Dutch commentator will forgive me.... Where I have enlarged them, I
desire the false critics would not always think that those thoughts are
wholly mine, but either that they are secretly in the poet, or may be
fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both these considerations
should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were
living, and an Englishman, they are such as he would probably have
written."[411]

By a sort of irony the more faithful translator came in time to
recognize this as one of the precepts of his art, and sometimes to use
it as an argument against too much liberty. The Earl of Roscommon says
in the preface to his translation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_, "I have
kept as close as I could both to the meaning and the words of the
author, and done nothing but what I believe he would forgive if he were
alive; and I have often asked myself this question." Dryden follows his
protest against imitation by saying: "Nor must we understand the
language only of the poet, but his particular turn of thoughts and
expression, which are the characters that distinguish, and, as it were,
individuate him from all other writers. When we come thus far, 'tis
time to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to give his
thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or if not, to
vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance."[412] Such
faithfulness, according to Dryden, involves the appreciation and the
reproduction of the qualities in an author which distinguish him from
others, or, to use his own words, "the maintaining the character of an
author which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear
that individual poet whom you would interpret."[413] Dryden thinks that
English translators have not sufficiently recognized the necessity for
this. "For example, not only the thoughts, but the style and
versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different: yet I see, even in
our best poets who have translated some parts of them, that they have
confounded their several talents, and, by endeavoring only at the
sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them so much alike that, if
I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the
cop