Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/266

138 attention remiss, by a previous account of the end of it.

The next thing which employed my thoughts was the heroes' names. It might perhaps take off somewhat from the majesty of the poem, had I cast away such noble sounds as, Physignathus, Lychopinax, and Crambophagus, to substitute Bluff-cheek, Lick-dish, and Cabbage-eater, in their places. It is for this reason I have retained them 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 should 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 Homer's particularities; and used 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