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LETTER I.
SIR,
am now going to obey your Commands; but you must let me do it in my own way, that is, write as much, or as little at a time as I may have an Inclination to, and just as things offer themselves. After this manner you may receive in a few Letters, all that I have said to you about poetical Translations, and the resemblance there is between Virgil's and Milton's Versification, and some other Matters of the same nature.
To begin with the Business of Translation.
Whoever sits down to translate a Poet, ought in the first place to consider his Author's peculiar Stile; for without this, tho' the Translation may be very good in all other respects, it will hardly deserve the Name of a Translation.
The two great Men amongst the Antients differ from each other as much in this particular as in the Subjects they treat of. The Stile of Homer, who sings the Anger or Rage of Achilles, is rapid.[page 2] The Stile of Virgil, who celebrates the Piety of Æneas, is majestick. But it may be proper to explain in what this Difference consists.
The Stile is rapid, when several Relatives, each at the head of a separate Sentence, are governed by one Antecedent, or several Verbs by one Nominative Case, to the close of the Period.