Difficulty of Translating Don Quixote, from its Idio- matic Phraseology. Of the best Translations of Other characteristics of Composition which render Translation difficult. — Antiquated Terms. - New Terms.-Verba Ardentia.-Simplicity of Thought and Expression.-In Prose-In Poetry.-Naïveté in the latter.-Chaulieu,-Parnelle,-Theocritus,- La Fontaine.-Series of Minute Distinctions mark- The genius of the Translator should be akin to that of the original author.The best Translators have shone in original composition of the same species with that which they have translated,―Of Vol- taire's Translations from Shakespeare.-Of the pe- culiar character of the wit of Voltaire.-His Trans- lation from Hudibras.—Excellent anonymous French ERRATA. Pag. 46. line 6. from the bottom, naióv r. naivóv 146. The Note is misplaced: It belongs to P. 149. as it 160. 1. 6. χἡσυχῶς, r. χ' ἡσυχῶς, 162. 1. 6. Φιλλρακαί, ν. φίλτρα και, 165. 1. 8. Aëria r. Aëra P. 166. line last pass, r. passe, 169. 1. 5. from the bottom, revíav r. πevíav 170. 1. 8. from the bottom, Trajicos z. Tragicos . 261. 1. 7. from the bottom, π' αλφιτα ; 7. τ'αλφιτα; 271. 1. 11: from the bottom, meaning r. mean ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION. INTRODUCTION. THERE HERE is perhaps no department of literature which has been less the object of cultivation, than the Art of Translating. Even among the ancients, who seem to have had a very just idea of its importance, and who have accordingly ranked it among the most useful branches of literary education, we meet with no attempt to unfold the principles of this art, or to reduce it to rules. In the works of Quinctilian, of Cicero, and A of the Younger Pliny, we find many passages which prove that these authors had made translation their peculiar study; and, conscious themselves of its utility, they have strongly recommended the practice of it, as essential towards the formation both of a good writer and an accomplished orator *. But it is much to be regretted, that they who were so eminently well qualified to furnish instruction in the art itself, have contributed little more to its advancement than by some general recommendations of its importance. If indeed time had * Vertere Græca in Latinum, veteres nostri oratores optimum judicabant. Id se Lucius Crassus, in illis Ciceronis de oratore libris, dicit factitasse. Id Cicero suâ ipse personâ frequentissimè præcipit. Quin etiam libros Platonis atque Xenophontis edidit, hoc genere translatos. Id Messalæ placuit, multæque sunt ab eo scriptæ ad hunc modum orationes. Quinctil. Inst. Orat. 1. 10. c. 5. Utile imprimis, ut multi præcipiunt, vel ex Græco in Latinum, vel ex Latino vertere in Græcum: quo genere exercitationis, proprietas splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, præterea imitatione optimorum, similia inveniendi facultas paratur: simul quæ legentem fefellissent, transferentem fugere non possunt. Plin. Epist. l. 7. Ep. 7. spared to us any complete or finished specimens of translation from the hand of those great masters, it had been some compensation for the want of actual precepts, to have been able to deduce them ourselves from those exquisite models. But of ancient translations the fragments that remain are so inconsiderable, and so much mutilated, that we can scarcely derive from them any advantage *. To the moderns the art of translation is of greater importance than it was to the ancients, in the same proportion that the great mass of ancient and of modern literature, accumulated up to the present times, bears to the general stock of learning in the most enlightened periods of antiquity. But it is a singular consideration, that under the daily experience of the advantages of good translations, in opening to us all the stores of ancient knowledge, and creating a free intercourse of science and of literature A 2 There remain of Cicero's translations some fragments of the Economics of Xenophon, the Timæus of Plato, and part of a poetical version of the Phenomena of Aratus. |