Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/156

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Chap. IX.
TRANSLATION.
141

the original, the most correct taste is requisite to prevent that ease from degenerating into licentiousness. I have given some examples of the want of this taste in treating of the imitation of style and manner. The most licentious of all translators was Mr Thomas Brown, of facetious memory, in whose translations from Lucian we have the most perfect ease; but it is the ease of Billingsgate and of Wapping. I shall contrast a few passages of his translation of this author, with those of another translator, who has given a faithful transcript of the sense of his author, but from an over-scrupulous fidelity has failed a little in point of ease.

Gnathon. "What now! Timon, do you strike me? Bear witness, Hercules! O me, O me! But I will call you into"the