in literature, is a matter of so much importance, that no other apology can be made for for the very imperfect manner in which it is treated in the Encyclopaedia, than a candid declaration that it was impossible to enter at all upon the subject within the narrow limits to which we were then restricted by the proprietors of the work. The fundamental laws of translation, which we gave from Dr Campbell of Aberdeen, we believe indeed to be unexceptionable; but the question is, how are these laws to be obeyed?

In order that a translator may be enabled to give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work, it is almost needless to observe, that he must possess a perfect knowledge of both languages, viz. that of his author, and that into which he is to translate; and that he must have a competent acquaintance with the subject of which his author treats. These propositions we consider as self evident; but if any of our readers shall be of a different opinion, we refer them to an Essay on the Principles of Translation, published 1797 by Cadell and Davies, London, where they will find our doctrine very clearly illustrated. It may be proper to add, that such a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages as merely enables a man to read them with ease and entertainment to himself, is by no means sufficient to qualify him for translating every Greek and Latin book, even though it treats of a subject with which he has a general acquaintance. The religious rites and ceremonies of the Greeks and Romans, as well as the radical words of their language, were derived from the East; and he who is an absolute stranger to oriental literature, will be very liable to mistake occasionally the sense of Greek and Roman authors who treat of religious subjects. We could illustrate the truth of this position by quotations from some of the most admired modern translations of the Greek Scriptures, which we have no hesitation to say fall very short of the authorized version in accuracy as well as in elegance. The divines employed by King James to translate the Old and New Testaments were profoundly skilled in the learning, as well as in the languages, of the East; whilst some of those who have professed to improve their version seem not to have possessed a critical knowledge of the Greek tongue, to have known little of the Hebrew, and to have been absolute strangers to the dialect spoken in Judea in the days of our Saviour, as well as to the manners, customs, and peculiar opinions of the Jews' sects. Neither metaphysical acuteness, nor the most perfect knowledge of the principles of translation in general, will enable a man who is ignorant of these things to improve the authorized version either of the Gospels or the Epistles; for such a man knows not accurately, and therefore cannot give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.

But supposing the translator completely qualified with respect to knowledge, it becomes a question, whether he may, in any case, add to or retrench the ideas of his author? We are strongly inclined to think, that, in no case, it is allowable to take such liberties; but the ingenious and elegant essayist, whose work on the principles of translation we must always quote with respect, is of a different opinion. "To give a general answer (says he) to this question, I would say, that this liberty may be used, but with the greatest caution. It must be further observed, that the superadded idea shall have the most necessary connection with the original thought, and actually increase its force. And, on the other hand, that whenever an idea is cut off by the translator, it must be only such as is an accessory, and not a principle, in the clause or sentence. It must likewise be confessedly redundant, so that its retrenchment shall not impair or weaken the original thought. Under these limitations, a translator may exercise his judgment, and assume to himself, in so far, the character of an original writer."

Of the judicious use, as he thinks it, of this liberty, the author quotes many examples, of which we shall select three, as well calculated to illustrate our own ideas of the subject.

In the first book of the Iliad, Achilles, having resolved, though indignantly, to give up Briseis, desires Patroclus to deliver her to the heralds of Agamemnon:

"Our parting, Patroclus, let us make amends for our parting." Ex. J. ἀποχώρησεν Ἀχιλλέας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ ἐγὼ ἀποχώρησα ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. "Patroclus now th' unwilling beauty brought; She in soft sorrows, and in pensive thought, Paft silent, as the heralds held her hand, And oft look'd back, slow moving o'er the strand."

Pope.

Our author thinks, and we heartily agree with him, that the amplification in the three last lines of this version highly improves the effect of the picture; but we cannot, consider this amplification as a new idea superadded. It was the object of Homer to inform his countrymen, that Briseis went with the heralds unwillingly. This he does by the words ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, and it is by no means improbable, that the rhythmical movement of the verse may have presented to the ancient Greeks the image of the lady walking slowly and reluctantly along. This image, we are sure, is not produced by a literal translation of the Greek words into English; and therefore it was Pope's duty, not to add to the ideas of the original, but, by amplification, to present to his own countrymen the picture which Homer, by the superiority of the Greek language and rhythm, had presented to his.

In the ninth book of the Iliad, where Phoenix reminds Achilles of the care he had taken of him while an infant, one circumstance, extremely mean, and even disgusting, is found in the original:

"When I placed you before my knees, I crammed you with meat, and gave you wine, which you often vomited upon my bosom, and stained my clothes, in your troublesome infancy:" but we cannot agree with our author, that the English reader is obliged to Pope for having altogether sunk this nauseous image. What is, or ought to be, our object in reading Homer? If it be merely to delight our ear with sonorous lines, and please our fancy with grand or splendid images, the translator certainly did right in keeping out of view this disgusting picture of savage life; but when he did so, he cannot be said to have given a complete transcript of his author's ideas. To please ourselves, however, with splendid images, is not our only object when studying the the works of the ancient poets. Another, and in our opinion a more important object, is to acquire a lively notion of ancient manners; and if so, Pope grossly misleads the mere English reader, when, instead of the beauty image of Homer, he presents him with the following scene, which he may daily meet with in his own family, or in the families of his friends:

Thy infant break a like affection show'd, Still in my arms, an ever pleasing load; Or at my knee, by Phoenix would it thou stand, No food was grateful but from Phoenix hand: I pass my watchings o'er thy helpless years, The tender labours, the complaint cares.

This is a picture of the domestic manners of Great Britain in the 18th century, and not of Greece in the heroic ages.

In the beginning of the eighth book of the Iliad, Homer puts into the mouth of Jove a very strange speech, stuffed with braggart vaunting and ludicrous images. This, as our author observes, is far beneath the dignity of the thunderer; but it is only beneath the dignity of the thunderer as our habits and modes of thinking compel us to conceive such a being. The thunderer of the Greeks was a notorious adulterer and sodomite, whose moral character sinks beneath that of the meanest of our bravos; and as he had dethroned his father, and waged for some time a doubtful war with certain earthly giants, it does not appear to us that the boasting speech which Homer puts into his mouth is at all unuitable to his acknowledged attributes. But whether it be or not, was not the translator's concern. Homer, when he composed it, certainly thought it not unworthy of the thunderer; and whatever Pope's opinion might be, he had no right to substitute his own notions of propriety for those of his author. The mythological tales of the poets, and more especially of Homer and Hesiod, constituted, as every one knows, the religious creed of the vulgar Greeks (see Polytheism, n° 33, Encycl.) and this circumstance makes it doubly the duty of the translator to give, on such subjects, a fair transcript of his author's ideas, that the mere English reader, for whom he writes, may know what the ancients really thought of the objects of their idolatrous worship. This Pope has not done in the speech under consideration; and has therefore, in our opinion, deviated widely from the first and most important of the three general laws of translation. Johnson has apologized, we think sufficiently, for many of Pope's embellishments of his author; but he has not attempted to make an apology for such embellishments as alter the sense. We cannot indeed conceive a pretence upon which it can ever be allowable in a translator to add to the ideas of his author, to retrench, or to vary them. If he be translating history, and find his author advancing what he believes to be false, he may correct him in a note; but he has no right to make one man utter, as his own, the belief or the sentiments of another, when that belief, and those sentiments, are not his own. If he be translating a work of science, he may likewise correct the errors of his author in notes, as Dr. Clerke corrected those of Rohault; but no man has a right to give to Rohault the science of a Newton. The translator of a poem may certainly employ amplification to place in a striking light the images or the sentiments of the original work; but he must not alter those images or sentiments so as to make that appear grand or elegant in the version, which is mean or disfiguring in the original. On every occasion on which he takes such liberties as these, he ceases to be a translator, and becomes a faithless paraphrast.

The second general law of translation, though certainly less important, is perhaps more difficult to be observed than the first. We have stated it in these words: (See Translation, Encycl.) "The style and manner of the original should be preserved in the translation;" but it is obvious, that this cannot be done by him who possesses not sufficient taste and judgment to ascertain with precision to what class the style of the original belongs. "If a translator fail in this discernment, and want this capacity, let him be ever so thoroughly master of the sense of his author, he will present him through a distorting medium, or exhibit him in a garb that is unsuitable to his character." It would obviously be very improper to translate the elegantly simple language of Cæsar into rounded periods like those of The Rambler, or the Orations of Cicero into the language of Swift.

The chief characteristic of the historical style of the sacred Scriptures is its simplicity; and that simplicity is, for the most part, well preserved in the authorised version. It is, however, lost in many of the modern versions. Castrio's, for instance, though intitled to the praise of elegant latinity, and though, in general, faithful to the sense of the original, yet exhibits numberless transgressions of the law which is now under consideration. Its sentences are formed in long and intricate periods, in which many separate members are artfully combined; and we observe a constant endeavour at classical phraseology and ornamented diction, instead of the beautiful simplicity of the original.

The version of the Scriptures by Arias Montanus is, in some respects, a contrast to that of Castrio. By adopting the literal mode of translation, Arias undoubtedly intended to give as faithful a picture as he could, both of the sense and of the manner of the original. Not attending to the peculiar idioms of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, which, in some respects, are very different from each other, he has, by giving to his Latin the combination and idioms of the two first of these languages, sometimes made the sacred writers talk absurdly. In Latin, as every school-boy knows, two negatives make an affirmative, whilst in Greek they add force to the negation. οὐκ εἰσείσαι τοῦτο ἐναντίον εἰπεῖν signifies, "Without me ye can do nothing," or, "Ye cannot possibly do any thing;" but Arias has translated the words sine me non potest facere nihil, i.e., "without me ye cannot do nothing;" or, "ye may do something," which is directly contrary to the meaning of our Lord. It is not therefore by translating literally or verbally that we can hope to preserve the style and manner of the original.

To express in florid or elevated language the ideas of an author who writes himself in a simple style, is not to give in the version a just picture of the original; but to attempt, for the sake of verbal accuracy, to introduce into one language the peculiar idioms or construction of another, is still worse, as in this mode of translation the sense, as well as the manner of the original, is lost. The rule obviously is to use, in the version, the words. words and phraseology which we have reason to believe that the author would himself have used, had he been master of the language into which we are translating his ideas. Thus, if we are to translate into English a piece of elegantly simple Greek or Latin, we must make ourselves completely master of the author's meaning, and, neglecting the Greek or Latin idioms, express that meaning in elegantly simple English. We need not add, that when the language of the original is florid or grand, if that style be suited to the subject, the language of the translation should be florid or grand likewise; but care must always be taken that perspicuity be not sacrificed to ambitious ornaments of any kind; for ornaments which obscure the sense are worse than useless.

If these reflections be just, it is obvious that a poem cannot be properly translated into prose. The mere sense may doubtless be thus transferred from one language into another, as has generally been done by Macpherson in his hobbling version of the Iliad, and perhaps more completely by a late translator of Anacreon; but in such a version, the style and manner of the original must necessarily be lost. Of this the following accurate prose translation of Anacreon's ninth ode (on a dove) is a striking instance:

"O lovely Pigeon! whence, whence do you fly? Whence, speeding through the air, do you breathe, and distil so many perfumes? Who is your master? For it concerns me to know. Anacreon sent me to a youth,—to Bathylus, at present the prince, and disdaining of all things Venus told me, receiving a little hymn in return. And I serve Anacreon in such transactions as these: and now I carry his letters, such as you see: and he affirms, that he will immediately make me free. But I will remain a servant with him although he may dismiss me: For wherefore does it behove me to fly, both over mountains, and fields, and to perch on trees, devouring some rustic food? Now indeed I eat bread, snatching it from the hands of Anacreon himself; and he gives me the wine to drink which he drinks before me; and having drunk, I perhaps may dance, and cover my master with my wings: then going to rest, I sleep upon the lute itself. You have it all—begone: you have made me more talkative, O mortal! than even

The Odes of Anacreon, How inferior is the general effect of this piece of prose to that of the well-known poetical versions of Addison and Johnson? and yet the mere idea of the original are perhaps more faithfully transferred by this anonymous writer than by either of those elegant translators. The emotions indeed excited by the original are not here brought into view.

The third general law of translation is so nearly allied to the second, that we have very few directions to give for the observation of it. He who, in his version, preserves the style and manner of the original, as we have endeavoured to shew that they ought to be preserved, will, of course, give to the translation the estate of original composition. The principal difficulty that he has to encounter in this part of his talk, will occur in the translating of idiomatical and proverbial phrases. Hardly any two languages are constructed precisely in the same way; and when the structure of the English language is compared with that of the Greek and Latin, a remarkable difference between the ancient and modern tongues is found to pervade the whole. This must occasion very considerable difficulty; but it is a difficulty which will be removed by a due observance of the former law, which directs the translator to make his author speak English in such a style to Englishmen as he spoke his own tongue to his own countrymen, and of course to use the English idiom with English words. But what is to be done with those proverbial phrases of which every language has a large collection, and which allude to local customs and manners?

The ingenious author of the Essay so often quoted, very properly observes, in answer to this question, that the translation is perfect when the translator employs, in his own language, an idiomatic phrase corresponding to that of the original. "It is not (says he) possible perhaps to produce a happier influence of translation by corresponding idioms, than Sterne has given" in the translation of Slawkenbergius's tale. "Nihil me penitet Stans, hicus nafs, quoth Pamphagus; that is, "My nose has been the making of me." Nec efl cur penitet; that is, "How the deuce should such a nose fail?" Miles peregrini in faciem sufficit! "The centinel looked into the stranger's face. Never saw such a nose in his life!"

As there is nothing (continues our author) which so much conduces both to the ease and spirit of composition as a happy use of idiomatic phrases, there is nothing which a translator, who has a moderate command of his own language, is so apt to carry to an extreme. Of this he gives many striking examples from Eckard's translations of Terence and Plautus, for which we must refer the reader to the Essay itself. He observes, likewise, that in the use of idiomatic phrases, a translator frequently forgets both the country of his original author, and the age in which he wrote; and while he makes a Greek or Roman speak French or English, he unwittingly puts into his mouth allusions to the manners of modern France or England. This, to use a phrase borrowed from painting, may be termed an offence against the costume. The proverbial expression ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑπερβολῆς, in Theocritus, is of similar import with the English proverb, to carry coals to Newcastle; and the Scotch, to drive salt to Dysart; but it would be a gross impropriety to use either of these expressions in the translation of an ancient classic. Of such improprieties our author points out many instances both in French and English translations of the classics; and he might have increased the number by quotations from Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, where, instead of Roman senators and their wives, we meet with modern gentlemen and ladies, with secretaries at war, paymasters, commissary generals, and lord high admirals. It is true the memoirs of the court of Augustus is no translation; but with respect to costume, it is necessarily subject to the laws of translation.

Offences against costume are often committed by the use of improper words as well as of improper phrases. To introduce into dignified and solemn composition words associated with mean and ludicrous subjects, is equally a fault in an original author and in a translator; and it is obviously improper, in the translation of works of very high antiquity, to make use of words which have but lately been admitted into the language of the translator. Faults of this kind are very frequent in Dr Geddes's translation of the Bible, as when the psalms are called the skipover; the tabernacle of the congregation,