upon it*, appears to have confidered the immutability of living language as an impoffible thing. It were vain then to flatter ourselves with the hope of permanency to any of the modern tongues of Europe; which, being more ungrammatical than the Latin and Greek, are exposed to more dangerous, because lefs difcernible, innovations. Our want of tenfes and cafes makes a multitude of auxiliary words neceffary; and to these the unlearned are not attentive, because they look upon them as the least important parts of language; and hence they come to be omitted or mifapplied in conversation, and afterwards in writing. Befides, the spirit of commerce, manufacture, and naval enterprise, fo honourable to modern Europe, and to Great Britain in particular, and the free circulation of arts, fciences, and opinions, owing in part to the use of printing, and to our improvements in navigation, must render the modern tongues, and especially the English, more variable than the Greek or Latin. Much indeed has been done of late to afcertain and fix the English tongue. Johnfon's Dictionary is a most important, and, confidered as the work of one man, a moft wonderful performance. It does honour to England, and to human genius; and proves, that there is ftill left among us a force of mind equal to that which formerly distinguished a Stephanus or a Varro. Its influence in diffusing the know

Hor. Ar. Poet. verf. 46.-72.

ledge

ledge of the language, and retarding its decline

is already observable:

Si Pergama dextra

Defendi poffent, etiam hac defenfa fuiffent.

And yet, within the last twenty years, and fince this great work was published, a multitude of new words have found their way into the English tongue, and, though both unauthorised and unneceffary, féem likely to remain in it.

In this fluctuating state of modern languages, and of our own in particular, what could we expect from translations, if the study of Greek and Latin were to be difcontinued? Suppose all the good books of antiquity tranflated into English, and the originals destroyed, or, which is nearly the fame thing, neglected; that English grows obfolete in one century; and, in two, that tranflation must be retranflated. If there were faults in the first, and I never heard of a faultless translation, they must be multiplied tenfold in the fecond. So that, within a few centuries, there is reason to fear, that all the old authors would be either loft, or fo mangled as to be hardly worth preferving. A fyftem of Geometry, one would think, must lofe lefs in a tolerable translation, than any other fcience. Political ideas are fomewhat variable; moral notions are ambiguous in their names at least, if not in themselves; the abftrufer fciences fpeak a language ftill more indefinite but ideas of number and quantity muft

for

or ever remain diftinct. And yet fome late authors have thrown light upon Geometry, by reviving the study of the Greek geometricians. Let any man read a tranflation of Cicero and Livy, and then study the author in his own tongue; and he shall find himself not only more delighted with the manner, but alfo more fully inftructed in the

matter.

Beauty of ftyle, and harmony of verfe, would decay at the first tranflation, and at the fecond or third be quite loft. It is not poffible for one who is ignorant of Latin to have any adequate notion of Virgil, the choice of his words, and the modulation of his numbers, have never been copied with tolerable fuccefs in any other tongue. Homer has been of all poets the most fortunate in a translator; his fable, defcriptions, and pathos, and, for the most part, his characters, we find in Pope but we find not his fimplicity, nor his impetuofity, nor that majestic inattention to the more trivial niceties of ftyle, which is fo graceful in him, but which no other poet dares imitate. Homer in Greek feems to fing extempore, and from immediate inspiration*; but in English his

"His poems (fays a very learned writer) were made to "be recited, or fung to a company; and not read in private, "or perused in a book, which few were then capable of "doing and I will venture to affirm, that whoever reads not "Homer in this view, lofes a great part of the delight he might receive from the poet."

66

Blackwell's Inquiry into the Life and Writing of Homer, p. 122.

phrafeology and numbers are not a little elaborate: which I mention, not with any view to detract from the tranflator, who truly deferves our highest praise, but to fhow the infufficiency of modern language to convey a juft idea of ancient writing. -I need not enlarge on this fubject: it is well known, that few of the great authors of antiquity have ever been adequately tranflated. No man who understands Plato, Demofthenes, or Xenophon, in the Greek, or Livy, Cicero, and Virgil, in the Latin, would willingly perufe even the best tranflations of those authors.

If one mode of compofition be better than another, which will fcarce be denied, it is furely worth while to preserve a standard of that which is best. This cannot be done, but by preserving the original authors; and they cannot be faid to be preserved, unless they be ftudied and underftood. Tranflations are like portraits. They may give some idea of the lineaments and colour, but the life and the motion they cannot copy; and too often, instead of exhibiting the air of the original, they prefent us with that only which is most agreeable to the taste of the painter. Abolish the originals, and you will foon see the copies degenerate.

There are in England two excellent ftyles of poetical compofition. Milton is our model in the one; Dryden and Pope in the other. Milton formed himself on the ancients, and on the modern Italians who imitate their ancestors of old Rome.

4

Rome. Dryden and Pope took the French poets for their pattern, particularly Boileau, who followed the ancients (of whom he was a paffionate admirer) as far as the profaic genius of the French tongue would permit. If we reject the old authors, and take these great moderns for our standard, we do nothing more than copy after a copy. If we reject both, and fet about framing new modes of compofition, our fuccefs will probably be no better, than that of the projectors whom Gulliver visited in the metropolis of Balnibarbi.

THE END.