r. Dryden says, must be a pedantic one....
And as I have not endeavored to give a verbal translation, so neither
have I indulged myself in a rash paraphrase, which always loses the
spirit of an ancient by degenerating into the modern manners of
expression."[431]

Yet behind these well-sounding phrases there lay, one suspects, little
vigorous thought. Both the clarity and the honesty which belong to
Dryden's utterances are absent from much of the comment of the
eighteenth century. The apparent judicial impartiality of Garth, Fawkes,
Grainger, and their contemporaries disappears on closer examination. In
reality the balance of opinion in the time of Pope and Johnson inclines
very perceptibly in favor of freedom. Imitation, it is true, soon ceases
to enter into the discussion of translation proper, but literalism is
attacked again and again, till one is ready to ask, with Dryden, "Who
defends it?" Mickle's preface to _The Lusiad_ states with unusual
frankness what was probably the underlying idea in most of the theory of
the time. Writing "not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure
is to see what the author exactly says," but "to give a poem that might
live in the English language," Mickle puts up a vigorous defense of his
methods. "Literal translation of poetry," he insists, "is a solecism.
You may construe your author, indeed, but if with some translators you
boast that you have left your author to speak for himself, that you have
neither added nor diminished, you have in reality grossly abused him,
and deceived yourself. Your literal translations can have no claim to
the original felicities of expression, the energy, elegance, and fire of
the original poetry. It may bear, indeed, a resemblance, but such an
one as a corpse in the sepulchre bears to the former man, when he moved
in the bloom and vigor of life.

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus
Interpres--

was the taste of the Augustan age. None but a poet can translate a poet.
The freedom which this precept gives will, therefore, in a poet's hands,
not only infuse the energy, elegance, and fire of the author's poetry
into his own version, but will give it also the spirit of an
original."[432] A similarly clear statement of the real facts of the
situation appears in Johnson's remarks on translators. His test for a
translation is its readability, and to attain this quality he thinks it
permissible for the translator to improve on his author. "To