Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/176

 lish, where the French use the preposition de or of. These, which may be termed the general idioms of a language, are soon understood, and are exchanged for parallel idioms with the utmost ease. With regard to these a translator can never err, unless through affectation or choice. For example, in translating the French phrase, Il profita d'un avis, he may choose fashionably to say, in violation of the English construction, he profited of an advice; or, under the sanction of poetical licence, he may choose to engraft the idiom of one language into another, as Mr Macpherson has done, where he says, "Him to the strength of Hercules, the lovely Astyochea bore;" Il. lib. 2. l. 165. But it is not with regard to such idiomatic constructions, that a translator