Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/121

 cute an irreclaimable and incurable barbarian. And assuredly this impression will be neither removed nor modified when we come to examine his translations from Latin poetry. If the report is to be believed which attributes to Ben Jonson the avowal of an opinion that above all things he excelled in translation, it must be admitted that for once the foolish theory which represents men of genius as incapable of recognizing what is or is not their best work or their most distinguishing faculty is justified and exemplified after a fashion so memorable that the exception must be invoked to prove the rule. For a worse translator than Ben Jonson never committed a double outrage on two languages at once, I should be reluctant to quote examples of this lamentable truth, if it were not necessary to vindicate his contemporaries from such an imputation as is conveyed in the general belief that his method of translation is merely the method of his age. The fact is that it is as exceptionally abominable as his genius, when working on its own proper and original lines, is exceptionally admirable. I am no great lover of Horace, but I cannot pretend to think that the words