Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/274

 new edition, and limiting his own undertaking solely to the correction of the text of Urquhart and Motteux, to which he has added a translation of the notes of M. Du Chat, who spent, as Mr Ozell informs us, forty years in composing annotations on the original work. The English version of Rabelais thus improved, may be considered, in its present form, as one of the most perfect specimens of the art of translation. The best critics in both languages have borne testimony to its faithful transfusion of the sense, and happy imitation of the style of the original; and every English reader will acknowledge, that it possesses all the ease of original composition. If I have forborne to illustrate any of the rules or precepts of the preceding Essay