It is true, there is something, and that of some moment, to be objected against my englishing the Nature of Love, from the fourth book of Lucretius; and I can less easily answer why I translated it, than why I thus translated it. The objection arises from the obscenity of the subject; which is aggravated by the too lively and alluring delicacy of the verses. In the first place, without the least formality of an excuse, I own it pleased me; and let my enemies make the worst they can of this confession. I am not yet so secure from that passion, but that I want my author's antidotes against it. He has given the truest and most philosophical account, both of the disease and remedy, which I ever found in any author; for which reasons I translated him. But it will be asked, why I turned him into this luscious English, for I will not give it a worse word. Instead of an answer, I would ask again of my supercilious adversaries, whether I am not bound, when I translate an author, to do him all the right I can, and to translate him to the best advantage? If, to mince his meaning, which I am satisfied was honest and instructive, I had either omitted some part of what he said, or taken from the strength of his expression, I certainly had wronged him; and that freeness of thought and words being thus cashiered in my hands, he had no longer been Lucretius. If nothing of this kind be to be read, physicians must not study nature, anatomies must not be seen, and somewhat I could say of particular passages in books, which, to avoid profaneness, I do not name. But the intention qualifies the act; and both mine and my author's were to instruct, as well as please. It is most certain, that bare-faced bawdry is the poorest pretence to wit imaginable. If I should say otherwise, I should have two great authorities against me: the one is the "Essay on Poetry," which I publicly valued before I knew the author of it, and with the commendation of which my Lord Roscommon so happily begins his "Essay on Translated Verse;" the other is no less than our admired Cowley, who says the same thing in other words; for, in his "Ode concerning Wit," he writes thus of it:
Much less can that have any place,
At which a virgin hides her face;
Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just
The author blush, there, where the reader must.
Here indeed Mr Cowley goes farther than the Essay; for he asserts plainly, that obscenity has no place in wit; the other only says, it is a poor pretence to it, or an ill sort of wit, which has nothing more to support it than bare-faced ribaldry; which is both unmannerly in itself, and fulsome to the reader. But neither of these will reach my case: for, in the first place, I am only the translator, not the inventor; so that the heaviest part of the censure falls upon Lucretius, before it reaches me: in the next place, neither he nor I have used the grossest words, but the cleanliest metaphors we could find, to palliate the broadness of the meaning; and, to conclude, have carried the poetical part no farther, than the philosophical exacted.[53]
There is one mistake of mine, which I will not lay to the printer's charge, who has enough to answer for in false pointings; it is in the word, viper: I would have the verse run thus:
The scorpion, love, must on the wound be bruised.[54]
There are a sort of blundering, half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism:
——non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parùm cavit natura.
True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge. It is a sign that malice is hard driven, when it is forced to lay hold on a word or syllable: to arraign a man is one thing, and to cavil at him is another. In the midst of an ill-natured generation of scribblers, there is always justice enough left in mankind, to protect good writers: and they too are obliged, both by humanity and interest, to espouse each other's cause, against false critics, who are the common enemies. This last consideration puts me in mind of what I owe to the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius.[55] I have not here designed to rob him of any part of that commendation which he has so justly acquired by the whole author, whose fragments only fall to my portion. What I have now performed is no more than I intended above twenty years ago. The ways of our translation are very different. He follows him more closely than I have done, which became an interpreter of the whole poem: I take more liberty, because it best suited with my design, which was, to make him as pleasing as I could. He had been too voluminous, had he used my method in so long a work; and I had certainly taken his, had I made it my business to translate the whole. The preference, then, is justly his; and I join with Mr Evelyn in the confession of it, with this additional advantage to him, that his reputation is already established in this poet, mine is to make its fortune in the world. If I have been any where obscure, in following our common author, or if Lucretius himself is to be condemned, I refer myself to his excellent annotations, which I have often read, and always with some new pleasure.
My preface begins already to swell upon me, and looks as if I were afraid of my reader, by so tedious a bespeaking of him; and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands; but the Greek gentleman shall quickly be dispatched, because I have more business with the Roman.