Page:Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice - Parnell (1717).djvu/15

 untranslated: However, I place them in English before the Poem, and sometimes give a short Character extracted out of their Names; as in Polyphonus, Pternophagus, &c. that the Reader may not want some Light of their Humour in the Original.

But what gave me a greater Difficulty was, to know how I shou'd follow the Poet, when he inserted Pieces of Lines from his Iliad, and struck out a Sprightliness by their new Application. To supply this in my Translation, I have added one or two of 's Particularities; and us'd two or three Allusions to some of our English Poets who most resemble him, to keep up some Image of this Spirit of the Original with an equivalent Beauty. To use more might make my Performance seem a Cento rather than a Translation, to those who know not the Necessity I lay under.

I am not ignorant, after all my Care, how the World receives the best Compositions of this Nature. A Man need only go to a Painter's, and apply what he hears said of a Picture to a Translation, to find how he shall be us'd upon his own, or his Author's Account. There one Spectator tells you, a Piece is extreamly fine, but he sets no Value on what is not like the Face it was drawn for, while a second informs you, such another is extreamly like, but he cares not for a Piece of Deformity, tho' its Likeness be never so exact.