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I mean Dotson's

" Paradisus Amissus" it is more true to the original both in sense & spirit other poetical version of length that I have seen. The Authe ment have had an amazing Comman of Latin phraseology,

far in harmony.

and a very

Dobson handlated Pros Solomon, the fur book of which he finished then he was (cholar at Winchester College (wheit he left for New College 1733 ) - it has been esteemed one of the purest specimens of Modern Later r. Warton's Sharia Pope vol V.240

Poetry tobus resigned his fellowitej in 17501

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ESSAY

ON THE

PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION.

INTRODUCTION

THERE is perhaps no department of

literature which has been lefs the object of cultivation, than the Art of Tranflating. Even among the ancients, who seem to have had a very juft idea of its importance, and who have accordingly ranked

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1

it

it among the most useful branches of literary education, we meet with no attempt to unfold the principles of this art, or to reduce it to rules. In the works of Quinctilian, of Cicero, and of the Younger Pliny, we find many paffages which prove that these authors had made tranflation their peculiar ftudy; and, conscious themselves of its utility, they have strongly recommended the practice of it, as effential towards the formation both of a good writer and an accomplished orator*. But it is much

to

* Vertere Græca in Latinum, veteres noftri oratores optimum judicabant. Id fe Lucius Craffus, in illis Ciceronis de oratore libris, dicit factitaffe. Id Cicero fuâ ipfe perfonâ frequentiffimè præcipit. Quin etiam libros Platonis atque Xenophontis edidit, hoc genere tranflatos. Id Meffale placuit, multæque funt ab co fcriptæ ad hunc modum orationes. Quinctil. Inft. Orat. 1. 10. G. 5.

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to be regretted, that they who were fo eminently well qualified to furnish instruction in the art itself, have contributed little more to its advancement than by fome general recommendations of its importance. If indeed time had fpared to us any complete or finished fpecimens of tranflation from the hand of those great masters, it had been fome compenfation for the want of actual precepts, to have been able to have deduced them ourselves from thofe exquifite models. But of ancient tranflations the fragments that remain are so inconfiderable, and fo much mutilated, that we

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Utile imprimis, ut multi præcipiunt, vel ex Græco in Latinum, vel ex Latino vertere in Græcum: quo genere exercitationis, proprietas fplendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, præterea imitatione optimorum, fimilia inveniendi facultas paratur: fimul quæ legentem fefelliffent, transferentem fugere non poffunt. Plin. Epift. 1. 7. Ep. 7•

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