But slaves we are, and labour on another man's plantation; we dress
the vineyard, but the wine is the owner's. If the soil be sometimes
barren, then we are sure of being scourged; if it be fruitful, and
our care succeeds, we are not thanked; for the proud reader will
only say--the poor drudge has done his duty. But this is nothing to
what follows; for being obliged to make his sense intelligible, we
are forced to untune our own verses that we may give his meaning to
the reader. He who invents is master of his thoughts and words: he
can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he renders them
harmonious. But the wretched translator has no such privilege, for
being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can in the
expression; and for this reason it cannot always be so sweet as that
of the original. There is a beauty of sound, as Segrais has
observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern
language. He instances in that mollis amaracus, on which Venus lays
Cupid in the first AEneid.
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