Words are not so easily
coined as money; and yet we see that the credit not only of banks,
but of exchequers, cracks when little comes in and much goes out.
Virgil called upon me in every line for some new word, and I paid so
long that I was almost bankrupt; so that the latter end must needs
be more burthensome than the beginning or the middle; and
consequently the twelfth AEneid cost me double the time of the first
and second. What had become of me, if Virgil had taxed me with
another book? I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in
hammered money for want of milled; that is, in the same old words
which I had used before; and the receivers must have been forced to
have taken anything, where there was so little to be had.
Besides this difficulty with which I have struggled and made a shift
to pass it ever, there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all
translators. We are bound to our author's sense, though with the
latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred as that
one iota must not be added or diminished, on pain of an anathema.
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