PREFACE

TO THE SECOND PART OF

POETICAL MISCELLANIES."

For this last half year I have been troubled with the disease, as I may call it, of translation. The cold prose fits of it, which are always the most tedious with me, were spent in THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE; the hot, which succeeded them, in

6 The first volume of the collection of poems, generally known by the name of DRYDEN'S MISCELLANIES, was published in 1684, without any preface or introduction. The second, which was entitled "SYLVE, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies," appeared in the next year: the third volume, which bears the title of EXAMEN POETICUM, was published in 1693, and the fourth, which was called THE ANNUAL MISCELLANY, in 1694. And here ended our author's concern with this collection; for the two remaining volumes were not issued out till after his death, viz. in 1703, and 1708.-In 1716, Jacob Tonson, the proprietor, published a new edition of this Miscellany, which differs very much from the former collection, containing many additional pieces, not in the original Miscellany, and on the other hand, omitting se veral poems which are found there.

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this volume of Verse Miscellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myself a kind of ease in the change of the paroxysm; never suspecting but that the humour would have wasted itself in two or three pastorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, something that was more pleasing in them, than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon some parts of them which had most affected me in the reading. These were my natural impulses for the undertaking but there was an accidental motive, which was full as forcible, and God forgive him who was the occasion of it. It was my Lord Roscommon's Essay on translated Verse,' which made me uneasy till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in the mathematicks; very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions; I am sure my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no

end

This Essay was first published in 4to. in, the second edition, corrected and enlarged, appeared in the late A commendatory copy of English verses, by our author, is prefixed to both editions and before the second, one in Latin by his son-Charles Dryden, then a student of Trinity College in Cambridge.

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Lord Roscommon died in January, 1684-5.

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less a vanity than to pretend that I have at least in
some places made examples to his rules. Yet
withal I must acknowledge, that I have many
times exceeded my commission; for I have both
added and omitted, and even sometimes very
boldly made such expositions of my authors, as no
Dutch commentator will forgive me. Perhaps,
in such particular passages, I have thought that I
discovered some beauty yet undiscovered by those
pedants, which none but a poet could have found.
Where I have taken away some of their expres-
sions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on
this consideration,—that what was beautiful in the
Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in
the English: and where I have enlarged them, I
desire the false criticks would not always think
that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that
either they are secretly in the poet, or may be
fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both those
considerations should fail, that my own is of a
piece with his, and that if he were living, and an
Englishman, they are such as he would probably
have written.

For, after all, a translator is to make his author
appear as charming as possibly he can, provided
he maintains his character, and makes him not
unlike himself. Translation is a kind of drawing
after the life; where every one will acknowledge
there is a double sort of likeness, a good one and a
bad. It is one thing to draw the outlines true,

the features like, the proportions exact, the colour

メ

get he who is inquisition

17. 18. comhadicts this.

ing itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these graceful, by the posture, the shadowings, and chiefly by the spirit which animates the whole. I cannot without some indignation look on an ill copy of an excellent original: much less can I behold with patience Virgil, Homer, and some others, whose beauties I have been endeavouring all my life to imitate, so abused, as I may say, to their faces by a botching interpreter. What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or Latin, will believe me or any other man, when we commend those authors, and confess we derive all that is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they take those to be the same poets, whom our Oglebies have translated? But I dare assure them, that a good poet is no more like himself, in a dull translation, than his carcase would be to his living body. There are many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother tongue. The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few it is impossible even for a good wit to understand and practise them without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and in short, without wearing off the rust which he contracted, while he was laying in a stock of learning. Thus difficult it is to understand the purity of English, and critically to discern

not only good writers from bad, and a proper style from a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure in a good author, from that which is vicious and corrupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young men take up some criedup English poet for their model; adore him, and imitate him, as they think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is boyish and trifling, wherein either his thoughts are improper to his subject, or his expressions unworthy of his thoughts, or the turn of both is unharmonious.

Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a nice critick in his mother tongue, before he attempts to translate in a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style, but he must be a master of them too: he must perfectly understand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own so that to be a thorough translator, he must be a thorough poet. Neither is it enough, to give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers; for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, there yet remains an harder task; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it; that is, the maintaining the character of an author, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts,