Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/25

Rh between his own time and the time of the author he imitates is postulated in the fact of his imitating at all, and if he is a dexterous writer, like Pope or Samuel Johnson, he is sure to be able to introduce a number of small equivalents, some of them perhaps actual improvements on the original, while he is at liberty to throw into the shade those points of which he despairs of being able to make anything. A translator has three courses open to him, to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self-congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these resources would be a serious misfortune: to be able to employ them (should it seem advisable) successively is no inconsiderable relief. The last of the three no doubt requires to be used very sparingly indeed, or one great object of translating a classic, the laying open of ancient life and thought to a modern reader, will be wantonly sacrificed. No one now-a-days would dream of going as far in this direction as Dryden and some