Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/202

198 The following Letter, of which the original is in the hands of Lord Hardwicke, was communicated to me by the kindness of Mr. Jodrell.

“SIR,

"The favour of your Letter, with your Remarks, can never be enough acknowledged; and the speed with which you discharged so troublesome a task, doubles the obligation.

"I must own, you have pleased me very much by the commendations so ill bestowed upon me; but, I assure you, much more by the frankness of your censure, which I ought to take the more kindly of the two, as it is more advantageous to a scribbler to be improved in his judgment than to be soothed in his vanity. The greater part of those deviations, from the Greek, which you have observed, I was led into by Chapman and Hobbes; who are, it seems, as much celebrated for their knowledge of the original, as they are decryed for the badness of their translations. Chapman pretends to have re- Rh