The Iliad; - Truth Seeker Times

xvi PEEPACE;
already familiar in English. From such a notion I cannot too
strongly express my intense dissent. I aim at precisely the
opposite ;—to retain every peculiarity of the original, so far as
I am able, with the greater care, the more foreign it may
happen to be,—whether it be matter of taste, of intellect, or of
morals. And as regards the dogma itself, it seems to me
about as reasonable as to say, that if a draughtsman executes
drawings of Greek statuary, he should aim to pass the draw-
ings off as actual statuary, or as something original from an
English hand. Nay, but he distinctly wishes it never to be
forgotten that he is' imitating, and imitating in a different
material. So also the English translator should desire the
reader always to remember that his work is an imitation,
and moreover is in a different material; that the original is
foreign, and in many respects extremely unlike our native
compositions.
Again : an original poet aims at attaining the highest excel-
lence in various kinds,—as in sublimity, in beauty, in taste,
&c. But a translator must by no means so set his aim ; for
his first duty is a historical one : to be faithful, exactly as is
the case with the draughtsman of the Elgin Marbles. I do
not say that he is bound to reproduce every petty defect, even
defects which are not characteristic or any way essential.
But he has a general duty of telling truth concerning the
original, which is the more urgent upon him, the higher are
its intrinsic merits ; and this duty hinders his aiming at other
or more excellence than he actually finds in the original.
And because I say this, I have been alleged to hold that the
problem of the translator is wholly industrial ! Just as much
industrial as that of Mr. Scharf, in his beautiful drawings of
the Lycian and Assyrian sculptures. Certainly, on the one
hand, he would not try so to draw them, that an Englishman
should fancy they were English sculptures ; nor, on the other
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