[16] From the modern allusion, barrieres du Louvre, this passage, strictly speaking, falls under the description of imitation, rather than of translation. See postea, [ch. xi].
[17] In the poetical works of Milton, we find many noble imitations of detached passages of the ancient classics; but there is nothing that can be termed a translation, unless an English version of Horace’s Ode to Pyrrha; which it is probable the author meant as a whimsical experiment of the effect of a strict conformity in English both to the expression and measure of the Latin. See this singular composition in the [Appendix, No. 2].
That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too:
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame;
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
Denham to Sir R. Fanshaw.