Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/68

 were, however, even in that age, some writers who manifested a better taste in poetical translation. May, in his translation of Lucan, and Sandys, in his Metamorphoses of Ovid, while they strictly adhered to the sense of their authors, and generally rendered line for line, have given to their versions both an ease of expression and a harmony of numbers, which approach them very near to original composition. The reason is, they have disdained to confine themselves to a literal interpretation; but have every where adapted their expression to the idiom of the language in which they wrote.