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94 The Translator’s InvisibilityOblivion in which he has been so long buried” (Nott 1778:vii). Findingit “astonishing, considering his merit,” that Propertius had never beentranslated into English, Nott intended his version “to repair thisneglect” (Nott 1782: iii–iv). For Nott, translation performed the work ofcultural restoration by revising the canon of foreign literature inEnglish, supporting the admission of some marginalized texts andoccasionally questioning the canonicity of others. In his preface to hisselection from the Persian poet Hafiz, Nott boldly challenged theEnglish veneration of classical antiquity by suggesting that westernEuropean culture originated in the east:we lament, whilst years are bestowed in acquiring an insight intothe Greek and Roman authors, that those very writers should havebeen neglected, from whom the Greeks evidently derived both therichness of their mythology, and the peculiar tenderness of theirexpressions.(Nott 1787:v–vi)Nott attacked any Anglocentric dismissal of Oriental poets like Hafiz,arguing the importance of “not judging of the glow of Eastern dialogueby the standard of our colder feelings and ideas,” and he went so faras to suggest that “the more exact rules of English criticism and taste”were complicit in English imperialism:Was it not probable to suppose, when a fatal ambition haddetermined us to possess a country, our distance from which madethe attempt unnatural; and when, under the pretence of commerce,we became the cruel invaders of another’s right; that we should atleast have made ourselves acquainted with the language of theconquered? This was necessary, whether to distribute justice, or toexercise compassion. But private avarice and extortion shut up thegates of public virtue.(ibid.:vii)Of course Nott’s foreignizing translation method could never beentirely free of domestic values and agendas, including thedevelopment of a national culture: he felt, for example, that the failureto translate Propertius caused “some degradation to English literature”(Nott 1782:iv). But he was sufficiently sensitive to the ethnocentricviolence involved in any encounter with a cultural other to questionthe imposition of bourgeois canons and interests, whether at home, in