On thee alone thy country turns her eyes; On thee her poets' future fame relies. The youth, whose wandering feet with care I led THE LIFE OF THE TRANSLATOR, THE REV. PHILIP FRANCIS. FEW memoirs have been handed down to us of the able translator of Horace and Demosthenes. He was of Irish extraction, if not born in that kingdom; where his father was a dignified clergyman, and, among other preferments, held the rectory of St. Mary, Dublin, from which he was rejected by the court on account of his Tory principles. His son, our author, was also educated for the church, and obtained a doctor's degree. His edition of Horace made his name known in England about the year 1743, and raised him a reputation, as a classical editor and translator, which no subsequent attempts have been able to diminish. Dr. Johnson, many years after other rivals had started, gave him this praise: "The lyrical part of Horace never can be properly translated; so much of the excellence is in the numbers and the expression. Francis has done it the best: I'll take his, five out of six, against them all." Some time after the publication of Horace, he appears to have come over to England; where, in 1753, he published a translation of part of the Orations of Demosthenes, intending to comprise the whole in two quarto volumes. It was a matter of some importance at that time to publish a large work of this kind, and the author had the precaution therefore to secure a copious list of subscribers. Unfortunately, however, it had to contend with the acknowledged merit of Leland's Translation; and, allowing their respective merits to have been nearly equal, Leland's had at least the priority in point of time, and, upon comparison, was preferred by the critics, as being more free and eloquent, and less literally exact. This, however, did not arise from any defect in our author's skill, but was merely an errour, if an errour at all, in judgment: for he conceived that as few liberties as possible ought to be taken with the style of his author, and that there was an essential difference between a literal translation, which only he considered as faithful, and an imitation, in which we can never be certain that we have the author's words or precise meaning. In the year 1755, he completed his purpose in a second volume, which was applauded as a |