Lay by Virgil, I beseech your lordship and all my better sort of
judges, when you take up my version, and it will appear a passable
beauty when the original muse is absent; but like Spenser's false
Florimel, made of snow, it melts and vanishes when the true one
comes in sight.
I will not excuse, but justify, myself for one pretended crime with
which I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this
translation, but in many of my original poems--that I Latinise too
much. It is true, that when I find an English word significant and
sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin nor any other language;
but when I want at home, I must seek abroad. If sounding words are
not of our growth and manufacture, who shall hinder me to import
them from a foreign country? I carry not out the treasure of the
nation which is never to return, but what I bring from Italy I spend
in England. Here it remains and here it circulates, for if the coin
be good it will pass from one hand to another. I trade both with
the living and the dead for the enrichment of our native language.
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