Restor’d the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hush’d to repose, and with a smile survey’d.
The troubled pleasure soon chastis’d by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The soften’d chief with kind compassion view’d,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursu’d.
This, it must be allowed, is good poetry; but it wants the affecting simplicity of the original. Fondly gazing on her charms—pleasing burden—The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear, are injudicious embellishments. The beautiful expression Δακρυοεν γελασασα is totally lost by amplification; and the fine circumstance, which so much heightens the tenderness of the picture, Χειρι τε μιν κατερεξεν, is forgotten altogether.
But a translator may discern the general character of his author’s style, and yet fail remarkably in the imitation of it. Unless he is possessed of the most correct taste, he will be in continual danger of presenting an exaggerated picture or a caricatura of his original. The distinction between good and bad writing is often of so very slender a nature, and the shadowing of difference so extremely delicate, that a very nice perception alone can at all times define the limits. Thus, in the hands of some translators, who have discernment to perceive the general character of their author’s style, but want this correctness of taste, the grave style of the original becomes heavy and formal in the translation; the elevated swells into bombast, the lively froths up into the petulant, and the simple and naïf degenerates into the childish and insipid.[34]
In the fourth Oration against Catiline, Cicero, after drawing the most striking picture of the miseries of his country, on the supposition that success had crowned the designs of the conspirators, closes the detail with this grave and solemn application: