The best thoughts and expressions
of an author, those that distinguish one writer from another, are
precisely those that are least capable of being translated. And who are
the men we are to employ in this promising business? Original genius
disdains the unmeaning drudgery. A mind that has one feature resembling
the ancients, will scarcely stoop to be their translator. The persons
then, to whom the performance must be committed, are persons of cool
elegance. Endowed with a little barren taste, they must be inanimate
enough to tread with laborious imbecility in the footsteps of another.
They must be eternally incapable of imbibing the spirit, and glowing
with the fire of their original. But we shall seldom come off so well as
this. The generality of translators are either on the one hand mere
pedants and dealers in words, who, understanding the grammatical
construction of a period, never gave themselves the trouble to enquire,
whether it conveyed either sentiment or instruction; or on the other
hand mere writers for hire, the retainers of a bookseller, men who
translate Homer from the French, and Horace out of Creech.
Let it not be said that I am now talking at random. Let us descend to
examples. We need not be afraid of instancing in the most favourable.
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