James Arbuckle by Holmes Richard;

Author:Holmes, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

N° 59. Saturday, May 14, 1726.[18]

(Arbuckle as Musophilus: Horace translations)

Magnum proventum poetarum annus hic attulit, Pliny.[19]

OUR Journalists have lately thought fit to communicate to the Public several Translations of Odes from Horace.[20] He is one of the Authors of Antiquity who can never be too much admired, for the Beauty and Variety of his Compositions, the Delicacy and Justness of his Reflections, and the inimitable Art he has of always appearing new every time he is read; being every where so rich in Sense, that we are perpetually making new Discoveries in him, and may constantly apply to him Milton’s Character of that noble Species of Writing,

Where more is meant than meets the Ear.[21]

It is therefore always with Singular Pleasure I observe those worthy Attempts which are made to render into English any Parts of so great and useful an Author. But at the same time, considering how many have been baffled in it already, I am ready to tremble for the adventurous Person who undertakes to give us a Translation of the whole, as seems to be the Design of one or more of those Gentlemen, whose Specimens have been published some weeks since in the London Journal.

I Do not pretend to Criticism enough, to make a Judgment on those Performances. But this I cannot help thinking, that so close and scrupulous a Translation of Horace as seems to be there promised, is what our Language will not bear. It is extremely difficult, at once to preserve the Spirit and the Words of an Author. In endeavouring the former, we are apt to fly off from his Meaning; and in adhering too closely to the latter, we are in equal danger of creeping after him in a servile manner. And truly I apprehend this last to be the worse Error of the two: for, as my Lord Bacon observes, in translating the Writings of Antiquity, the Spirit of the Original is apt to evaporate, unless a new Spirit be transfused into them by the Translator.[22] And certainly this Observation will hold much more in Poetical Productions; there being greater reason to fear, that a Translator should not be able to come up to the Poetry, than that he should miss the precise Meaning of his Original. A Reader at least will be much better satisfied with a Translation, where the Author’s Sense is beautifully expressed, tho not exactly in his own Phrase, than where it is perhaps more truly represented, but in a dry and spiritless manner; otherwise we must have had more Admirers of Hobbes’s Translation of Homer, than of Mr. Pope’s.[23]

In translating the two following Odes, I have endeavoured equally to shun the Licence of an Imitation, and the Restraint of a Literal Version. You will readily perceive, that they cannot pretend an Exemption from Censure; and indeed I am too sensible of their Defects, to desire their Publication on any other account, than as they may excite others to vindicate, by their more excellent Performances, an

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