"ed for the expression: Neither is it ne

66

cessary that words and lines should be "confined to the measure of their original. "The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. If the

66

fancy of Ovid be luxuriant, it is his cha"racter to be so; and if I retrench it, he is

66

no longer Ovid. It will be replied, that "he receives advantage by this lopping off "his superfluous branches; but I rejoin, "that a translator has no such right. When

a painter copies from the life, I suppose " he has no privilege to alter features and "lineaments, under pretence that his pic"ture will look better; perhaps the face "which he has drawn would be more exact, "if the eyes or nose were altered; but it "is his business to make it resemble the original. In two cases only there may a seeming difficulty arise; that is, if the thought be either notoriously trivial or dis"honest but the answer [will serve

66

66

"for both, That then they ought not to be "translated.

"Desperes tractata nitescere posses relinquas."

DRYDEN'S Pref. to Trans. from OVID's Epistles.

CHAPTER XI.

Of the Translation of Idioms. General Idioms.- Idiomatic Phrases. Examples from Spelman, Smollet's Gil Blas, Cotton, Echard, Sterne.-Injudicious Use of Idioms in the Translation, which do not correspond with the Age or Country of the Original. Idiomatic Phrases sometimes incapable of Translation.

WHILE a translator endeavours to give to his work all the ease of original composition, the chief difficulty he has to encounter will be found in the translation of idioms, or those turns of expression which do not belong to universal grammar, but of which every language has its own,

that are exclusively proper to it. It will be easily understood, that when I speak of the difficulty of translating idioms, I do not mean those peculiar phrases in all languages of which the sense is not accurately conveyed by the literal meaning: As, for example, the French phrase, un homme bien né, which we see often translated, a man well born, or of a good family; instead of a man of good natural dispositions: for a mistake in phrases of this kind only shews the translator's insufficient knowledge of the language from which he translates. Neither do I mean those general modes of arrangement or construction which regulate a whole language, and which may not be common to it with other tongues: As, for example, the placing the adjective always before the substantive in English, which in French and in Latin is more commonly placed after it; the use of the participle in English, where the present tense is used in other languages; as he is writing, scribit, il écrit ; the use of the preposition to before the infinitive in English, where the French use the preposition de or of. These last, which

may be termed the general idioms of a language, are soon understood, and are changed for parallel idioms with the utmost ease. With regard to these a translator can never err, unless through affectation or choice. For example, in translating the French phrase, Il profita d'un avis, he may choose fashionably to say, in violation of the English construction, he profited of an advice; or, under the sanction of poetical licence, he may choose to engraft the idiom of one language into another, as Mr Macpherson has done, where he says, "Him "to the strength of Hercules, the lovely Astyochea bore ;” Ον τεκεν ̓Αστυόχεια, βιη Hganλnsin Il. lib. 2. l. 165.

66

I must here, however, notice two errors in regard to general idioms into which many translators from the French language into the English, have fallen, either from ignorance, or inattention to the general construction of the two languages. 1. In narrative, or the description of past actions, the French often use the present tense for the preterite: Deux jeunes nobles Mexicains