Till heaps of dead alone defend the wall.
Of this conceit, of dead men defending the walls of Troy, Mr. Pope has the sole merit. The original, with grave simplicity, declares, that the people fell, fighting before the town, and around the walls.[27]
In the translation of the two following lines from Ovid’s Epistle of Sappho to Phaon, the same author has added a witticism, which is less reprehensible, because it accords with the usual manner of the poet whom he translates: yet it cannot be termed an improvement of the original:
“Scribimus, et lachrymis oculi rorantur abortis,
Aspice, quam sit in hoc multa litura loco.”
See while I write, my words are lost in tears,
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Pope.
But if authors, even of taste and genius, are found at times to have made an injudicious use of that liberty which is allowed in the translation of poetry, we must expect to see it miserably abused indeed, where those talents are evidently wanting. The following specimen of a Latin version of the Paradise Lost is an example of everything that is vitious and offensive in poetical translation.