Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/241

 which they have translated. The mutilated version which yet remains to us of the Timæus of Plato translated by Cicero, is a masterly composition, which, in the opinion of the best judges, rivals the merit of the original. A similar commendation cannot be bestowed on those fragments of the Phænomena of Aratus translated into verse by the same author; for Cicero's poetical talents were not remarkable: but who can entertain a doubt, that had time spared to us his versions of the orations of Demosthenes and Æschines, we should have found them possessed of the most transcendent merit?

have observed, in the preceding part of this essay, that poetical translation is less subjected to restraint than prose translation, and allows more of the free-