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.