Page:The Amyntas of Tasso (1770) - Percival Stockdale.djvu/22

xiv there his amorous pain hath often been soothed by the musick of the harmonious poet; whose pathetick flute draws the rocks from the mountains; makes the streams flow with milk, and honey drop from the oak."

It is the province of the poet to transport us into an agreeable, and blooming region of his own creating: this is his birth-right; the appellation of poet, with which he is dignified, implies the privilege. If we view his most striking characters in all their parts, we shall find that there is not an original in nature which exactly corresponds with them. Without this liberty, which hath been allowed him by long prescription, the art of poetry would be annihilated. The poetical eloquence of a rough old Trojan, or Grecian warriour, would be no longer endured: a simple, untutored shepherd would not be suffered to observe, or to reflect: he must not deliver his sentiments in elegant, though simple verse; and his good rhyme kept up for many lines together, would be still more intolerable. In short, without improving, and embellishing the life of the swain by fiction, a pastoral could never have been produced.

I have endeavoured in this translation, to express the sentiments of Tasso as he would have done had he been an Englishman, without a