act 1, sc. 1.[55] The same ancients, in Mr. Echard’s translation, are

familiarly acquainted with the modern invention of gunpowder; “Had we but a mortar now to play upon them under the covert way, one bomb would make them scamper,” _Fundam tibi nunc nimis vellem dari, ut tu illos procul hinc ex oculto cæderes, facerent fugam_, Ter. Eun. act 4. And as their soldiers swear and fight, so they must needs drink like the moderns: “This god can’t afford one brandy-shop in all his dominions,” _Ne thermopolium quidem ullum ille instruit_, Pl. Rud. act 2, sc. 9. In the same comedy, Plautus, who wrote 180 years before Christ, alludes to the battle of La Hogue, fought A.D. 1692. “I’ll be as great as a king,” says Gripus, “I’ll have a _Royal Sun_[56] for pleasure, like the king of France, and sail about from port to port,” _Navibus magnis mercaturam faciam_, Pl. Rud. act 4, sc. 2.

In the Latin poems of Pitcairne, we remark an uncommon felicity in cloathing pictures of modern manners in classical phraseology. In familiar poetry, and in pieces of a witty or humorous nature, this has often a very happy effect, and exalts the ridicule of the sentiment, or humour of the picture. But Pitcairne’s fondness for the language of Horace, Ovid, and Lucretius, has led him sometimes into a gross violation of propriety, and the laws of good taste. In the translation of a Psalm, we are shocked when we find the Almighty addressed by the epithets of a heathen divinity, and his attributes celebrated in the language and allusions proper to the Pagan mythology. Thus, in the translation of the 104th Psalm, every one must be sensible of the glaring impropriety of the following expressions:

Dexteram invictam canimus, Jovemque Qui triumphatis, hominum et Deorum Præsidet regnis.

Quam tuæ virtus tremefecit orbem Juppiter dextræ.

Et manus ventis tua Dædaleas Assuit alas.

facilesque leges Rebus imponis, quibus antra parent Æoli.

Proluit siccam pluvialis æther Barbam, et arentes humeros Atlantis.

Que fovet tellus, fluviumque regnum Tethyos.

Juppiter carmen mihi semper.

Juppiter solus mihi rex.

In the entire translation of the Psalms by Johnston, we do not find a single instance of similar impropriety. And in the admirable version by Buchanan, there are (to my knowledge) only two passages which are censurable on that account. The one is the beginning of the 4th Psalm:

O Pater, O hominum _Divûmque_ æterna potestas!

which is the first line of the speech of Venus to Jupiter, in the 10th _Æneid_: and the other is the beginning of Psalm lxxxii. where two entire lines, with the change of one syllable, are borrowed from Horace:

Regum timendorum in proprios greges, Reges in ipsos imperium est _Jovæ_.

In the latter example, the poet probably judged that the change of _Jovis_ into _Jovæ_ removed all objection; and Ruddiman has attempted to vindicate the _Divûm_ of the former passage, by applying it to saints or angels: but allowing there were sufficient apology for both those words, the impropriety still remains; for the associated ideas present themselves immediately to the mind, and we are justly offended with the literal adoption of an address to Jupiter in a hymn to the Creator.

If a translator is bound, in general, to adhere with fidelity to the manners of the age and country to which his original belongs, there are some instances in which he will find it necessary to make a slight sacrifice to the manners of his modern readers. The ancients, in the expression of resentment or contempt, made use of many epithets and appellations which sound extremely shocking to our more polished ears, because we never hear them employed but by the meanest and most degraded of the populace. By similar reasoning we must conclude, that those expressions conveyed no such mean or shocking ideas to the ancients, since we find them used by the most dignified and exalted characters. In the 19th book of the _Odyssey_, Melantho, one of Penelope’s maids, having vented her spleen against Ulysses, and treated him as a bold beggar who had intruded himself into the palace as a spy, is thus sharply reproved by the Queen:

Παντως θαρσαλεη κυον αδδεες, ουτι με ληθεις Ερδουσα μεγα εργον, ὁ ση κεφαλη αναμαξεις.

These opprobrious epithets, in a literal translation, would sound extremely offensive from the lips of the περιφρων Πηνελοπεια, whom the poet has painted as a model of female dignity and propriety. Such translation, therefore, as conveying a picture different from what the poet intended, would be in reality injurious to his sense. Of this sort of refinement Mr. Hobbes had no idea; and therefore he gives the epithets in their genuine purity and simplicity:

Bold bitch, said she, I know what deeds you’ve done, Which thou shalt one day pay for with thy head.

We cannot fail, however, to perceive, that Mr. Pope has in fact been more faithful to the sense of his original, by accommodating the expressions of the speaker to that character which a modern reader must conceive to belong to her:

Loquacious insolent, she cries, forbear! Thy head shall pay the forfeit of thy tongue.

A translator will often meet with idiomatic phrases in the original author, to which no corresponding idiom can be found in the language of the translation. As a literal translation of such phrases cannot be tolerated, the only resource is, to express the sense in plain and easy language. Cicero, in one of his letters to Papirius Pætus, says, “_Veni igitur, si vires, et disce jam προλεγομενας quas quæris; etsi sus Minervam_,” Ep. ad Fam. 9, 18. The idiomatic phrase _si vires_, is capable of a perfect translation by a corresponding idiom; but that which occurs in the latter part of the sentence, _etsi sus Minervam_, can neither be translated by a corresponding idiom, nor yet literally. Mr. Melmoth has thus happily expressed the sense of the whole passage: “If you have any spirit then, fly hither, and learn from our elegant bills of fare how to refine your own; though, to do your talents justice, this is a sort of knowledge in which you are much superior to your instructors.”—Pliny, in one of his epistles to Calvisius, thus addresses him, _Assem para, et accipe auream fabulam: fabulas immo: nam me priorum nova admonuit_, lib. 2, ep. 20. To this expression, _assem para_, &c. which is a proverbial mode of speech, we have nothing that corresponds in English. To translate the phrase literally would have a poor effect: “Give me a penny, and take a golden story, or a story worth gold.” Mr. Melmoth has given the sense in easy language: “Are you inclined to hear a story? or, if you please, two or three? for one brings to my mind another.”

But this resource, of translating the idiomatic phrase into easy language, must fail, where the merit of the passage to be translated actually lies in that expression which is idiomatical. This will often occur in epigrams, many of which are therefore incapable of translation: Thus, in the following epigram, the point of wit lies in an idiomatic phrase, and is lost in every other language where the same precise idiom does not occur:

_On the wretched imitations of the_ Diable Boiteux _of Le Sage_:

Le Diable Boiteux est aimable; Le Sage y triomphe aujourdhui; Tout ce qu’on a fait après lui N’a pas valu le Diable.

We say in English, “’Tis not worth a fig,” or, “’tis not worth a farthing;” but we cannot say, as the French do, “’Tis not worth the devil;” and therefore the epigram cannot be translated into English.

Somewhat of the same nature are the following lines of Marot, in his _Epitre au Roi_, where the merit lies in the ludicrous _naïveté_ of the last line, which is idiomatical, and has no strictly corresponding expression in English:

J’avois un jour un valet de Gascogne, Gourmand, yvrogne, et assuré menteur, Pipeur, larron, jureur, blasphémateur, Sentant la hart de cent pas à la ronde: Au demeurant le meilleur filz du monde.

Although we have idioms in English that are nearly similar to this, we have none which has the same _naïveté_, and therefore no justice can be done to this passage by any English translation.

In like manner, it appears to me impossible to convey, in any translation, the _naïveté_ of the following remark on the fanciful labours of Etymologists: “Monsieur,—dans l’Etymologie il faut compter les voyelles pour rien, et les consonnes pour peu de chose.”