Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/141

 prose translation, they appear preposterous and out of place, because they are never found in an original prose composition.

opposition to these remarks, it may be urged, that there are examples of poems originally composed in prose, as Fenelon's Telemachus. But to this we answer, that Fenelon, in composing his Telemachus, has judiciously adopted nothing more of the characteristics of poetry, than what might safely be given to a prose composition. His good taste prescribed to him certain limits, which he was under no necessity of transgressing. But a translator is not left to a similar freedom of judgement: he must follow the footsteps of his original. Fenelon's Epic Poem is of a very different