Page:Camoens - The Lyricks - Part I.djvu/15

 healthy, manly, hearty old song will find its little meed of appreciation if not of praise.

In this volume I follow the lines laid down for myself in "The Luusiads"; especially the use of archaicisms and of eclectic style. Both still appear to me necessary when translating a poet older than Shakespeare. Over-polish has been especially avoided: the labor limæ of the classics, and the "filing and finishing" of our older writers, was everywhere applied by my Poet to his Epos, not always to his minor pieces. This copy is naught if not perfectly faithful to its original; showing Camoens to the English reader in English dress. At the same time, I have borne in mind Rosetti's dictum—"the life-blood of rhythmical translation is, that a good poem should not be turned into a bad one."

Again: despite Denham's denunciation of literalism,—

despite Johnson, who quotes with approval,—

and despite the superficial popular paradox, "A literal translation is no translation at all," I have done my best to translate verbatim et literatim; not thought by thought, but word by word. Goethe finally laid down the law thus:—"There are two maxims of Translation. The one requires that the author of a foreign