The choicest Books that Rome or Greece have known,
Their excellent Translators made their own.
And tho' in all Translations the Spirit and Beauty of the Original must in a great measure be lost by Transfusion, yet in History especially you are sure to have the Method, the Facts, and the Politicks, tho' you have not the Strength and Ellegance of the Style. Dryden tells the late Duke of Bucks, in the Dedication to his Virgil; Impartially Speaking, the French are as much better Criticks, as they are worse Poets. The Latter is incontestable; and not to mention Milton, who is above all Parallel. They have nothing of Epick Poetry so good as our King Arthur; neither are their Corneille and Racine a Match for our Shakespear and Otway. They have no Body to name against Wycherley, Etherege, Shadwel, Congreve, Vanburgh, Steel. Moliere, the best of their Comick Poets, could write Scapius, Dandins, Sganarelles, and all Kinds of Farce perfectly well; but for Wit and Humour, Repartee, Polite Conversation, for what the Criticks call the Vis Comica, you must have recourse to the English Comedies, if you would know what it is. A French Marquis, as Moliere shew'd him upon his Stage, would only make a very good Taylor upon ours. They have no Hopkins for Elegy, no Philips for Pastoral: Scarron will hardly serve for a Ralpho to our Hudibras. In the Ode, I think, Malherbe is at least equal to Cowley, and Voiture and Sarazin are not behind our Suckling and Waller, in the gallant Way: Nor is our Prior behind their La Fontaine for Taletelling. On the other Hand, I am afraid we must allow, that we have no Translation in English equal to Seagrais's Virgil for Intelligence of the Original, and a correct as well as harmonious Diction, especially if the Character given of it by Ruæus is just. Did we look into other Sciences, we should find our selves more than a Match for them; What Names have they to set against our Newton and Halley in the Mathematicks, and our Sydenham and Willis in Physick. They have no Bacon, no Boyle in Philosophy. In History indeed they have a Varillas and a Maimbourg for our Nelson and Brady, and doubtless the Royal Historiographers will, in the History of Lewis XIV, come up to the Grand Rebellion, and Mr. Echard's History for Impartiality and Truth. If I were a Frenchman I should make a Start here, and cry out, What is their Tureune and their Conde to our Marlborough, and their Great Monarch, who took Pleasure in Slaughter and Devastation, to our Glorious King George, whose only Care and Delight is to maintain Liberty and Peace.
Dr. Felton declares we began to refine our Language much sooner than the French, and that the Writers in Queen Elizabeth's Reign are far preferable to Shakespear, Fletcher, Waller, Suckling, May, Sands, and all the Writers from the Gunpowder Plot to the Restoration. He will not be advis'd by the best Critick in Poetry, as he represents him. Mr. Dryden, who speaking of Beaumont and Fletcher, writes thus; I am apt to believe the English Language in them arrived to its Perfection: They wrote between the Beginning of King James I and the Reign of King Charles II, a Period in which Dr. Felton makes the English Language to have declin'd; though, if I were permitted to give Judgement, I should continue the Improvement of our Tongue till the Time of the Spectator, and the Translation of Homer, where, I think, it is in the greatest Purity and Elegance, and that one of the first deplorable Signs of its Declension was even the Discourse upon the Classicks. Dryden himself continues the good Taste till the Opening of the Long Parliament 1640, when, if you'l believe him, the Muses were struck dead at a Blow, abandon'd to a barbarous Race of Men, Enemies of all good Learning, such as Selden, Whitlock, Bathurst, Wilkins, and the immortal Milton. This Passage should have been transplanted into the two famous Histories of those Times, publish'd since King William's Death, particularly that of the Grand Rebellion, which Dr. Felton protests is the most impartial one that ever was written; but it is very well it does not stand in need of his Certificate, for there would have been great Exception taken against his Authority. As good a Word as the Doctor gives Mr. Dryden as a Critick, Dryden out-does him in his own Panegyrick.
Let Dryden with new Rules our Stage refine,
And his great Models form by this Design.
This Piece of Modesty in Verse is excelled by another in Prose; Our present Poets, himself the Top of them, have far surpast all the antient and modern Writers of other Countries.
Thus has he put himself above Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, &c. Notwithstanding we were so happy in Mr. Dryden's Criticisms, Doctor Felton is of Opinion the Art is not brought enough to Perfection among us; and therefore earnestly sollicites Sir Richard Steel to write Comments upon Homer and Virgil, as Mr. Addison has done upon Milton. I am satisfied Sir Richard Steel did not keep his Countenance if ever that Passage of the Doctor's came in his Way. I will not say the same of Mr. Trap, who, they tell me, is a Poet by his Place, or a made Poet, better by half than one born so; but if Doctor Felton had foreseen that the ingenious Gentleman would have came off as He did with Virgil, and in what a sad Place Doctor Swift would find his Translation, I believe he would have postpon'd the Encomium, What a polite Critick may do if he pleases, says the Doctor, and in how different an Aspect Criticism appears, when formed by Men of Parts and Fire, we may see in Mr. Trap; and the Encomium continues for a Page or two: But the aforesaid Translation having cut the Matter short, I will repeat no more of it.
Cowley was in as great Vogue 60 or seventy Years ago, as any Composer or Translater of our Time has been, and Doctor Felton without knowing that his Character is worn, informs us, that his Davideis is as good an Epick Poem as the Ilias, that his Lyricks are as good as Pindar's or Horace's, that he wrote Elegies as well as Tibullus, Epistles as well as Ovid, Pastorals as well as Theocritus; and that his Cutter of Colmanstreet is as good a Comedy as the Adelphi of Terence. The Doctor's own Words are; He rivalled the Greek and Latin Poets in every Thing but Tragedy. His saying so is the more remarkable, for that he had seen the Preface to Dryden's Fables, wherein that incomparable Critick, as he terms him, says Cowley is sunk in his Reputation, and the late Duke of Bucks in his Essay acknowledges as much:
Cowley might boast to have perform'd his Part,
Had he with Nature joyn'd the Rules of Art:
But ill Expression gives sometimes Allay
To noble Thoughts——————
Tho' All appears in Heat and Fury done,
The Language still must soft and easy run.
Doctor Felton in Praise of Criticism tells us, with equal Elegance and Perspicuity, If the Rules had not been given, we had not been troubled with many fewer Writers: And in the Pursuit of his own excellent Work, he declares, He has tempered the Briskness of Thought with the Sedateness of Judgement. The French have their Pensees Brusques, but the Doctor could not fall so low as that. Brusque signifying blunt, rash, and the like. This Briskness is, I suppose, more agreeable to the Conception of a certain Bookseller, who being written to by a certain Squire for a brisk History, sent him by the next Carrier that of Don Quixot. This was thirty Years ago, before we were so well furnished with brisk Histories as we have been since.
I take brisk in our Tongue to be to lively, as pert is to witty: But I cannot depend on my own Judgement; the Translator of Homer having used Briskness in the same Sense as Doctor Felton uses it: Heaven and Earth became engaged in the Subject, by which it rises to a great Importance, and is hastened forward into the briskest Scenes of Action. If that Author could bear the least Objection to any Thing that belongs to him, I would ask the Reader whether he does not fancy there is some Affectation in the Expression. But let that pass; if we are rightly informed, the Word Brisk is in the Teutonick Friesch, which is in plain English Frisk, and then for the Gods and Demi-gods to frisk up and down the Field of Action, or the Doctor to frisk up and down his Closet is very indecorous. The Duke of Buckingham in the Rehearsal seems to take Brisk in the latter Sense, as when Thunder and Lightning act their Parts on the Stage. The former says, I am the bold Thunder, the latter the brisk Lightning I. And not at all to derogate from the Character of Lightning, which has been so serviceable to all Sorts of Poetry and Poets, I cannot help confirming my Opinion by a very common Simile, and saying As brisk as bottled Ale.