a thousand
cavils," he writes in the course of his comments on Pope's _Homer_, "one
answer is necessary; the purpose of a writer is to be read, and the
criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown
aside."[433] The same view comes forward in his estimate of Cowley's
work. "The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the
decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more
amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare
their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy
and ignorance are content to style the learned."[434]

In certain matters, however, the translator claimed especial freedom. "A
work of this nature," says Trapp of his translation of the _Aeneid_, "is
to be regarded in two different views, both as a poem and as a
translated poem." This gives the translator some latitude. "The thought
and contrivance are his author's, but his language and the turn of his
versification are his own."[435] Pope holds the same opinion. A
translator must "give his author entire and unmaimed" but for the rest
the diction and versification are his own province.[436] Such a dictum
was sure to meet with approval, for dignity of language and smoothness
of verse were the very qualities on which the period prided itself. It
was in these respects that translators hoped to improve on the work of
the preceding age. Fawkes, the translator of Theocritus, believes that
many lines in Dryden's _Miscellany_ "will sound very harshly in the
polished ears of the present age," and that Creech's translation of his
author can be popular only with those who "having no ear for poetical
numbers, are better pleased with the rough music of the last age than
the refined harmony of this." Johnson, who strongly approved of Dryden's
performance, accepts it as natural that there should be other attempts
at the translation of Virgil, "since the English ear has been accustomed
to the mellifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction of poetry has
become more splendid."[437] There was something of poetic justice in
this attitude towards the seventeenth century, itself so unappreciative
of the achievements of earlier translators, but exemplified in practice,
it showed the peculiar limitations of the age of Pope.

As in the seventeenth century, the heroic couplet was the predominant
form in translations. Blank verse, when employed, was generally
associated with a protest ag