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Canon 45after he was arrested in the Commonwealth’s campaign to suppressroyalist insurgency, a suspect in a military counterplot, and just ayear after the second edition of the text by which he is bestremembered today, Coopers Hill (1642), a topographical poem thatoffers a politically tendentious evocation of English history on theeve of the civil wars (O’Hehir 1968; Underdown 1960). At this laterjuncture, Denham’s translation assumes the role of a culturalpolitical practice: “Written in 1636” it functions partly as a nostalgicglance back toward less troubled times for royal hegemony andpartly as a strategic cultural move in the present, wherein Denhamplans to develop a royalist aesthetic in translation to be implementednow and for the future, when hegemony is regained. “The hope ofdoing [Virgil] more right,” Denham asserted in his preface, “is theonly scope of this Essay, by opening this new way of translating thisAuthor, to those whom youth, leisure, and better fortune makesfitter for such under-takings” (Denham 1656:A2 v ). Denham saw hisaudience as the coming generations of English aristocracy, who,unlike him, would have the “better fortune” of escaping socialdisplacement in civil wars.The aristocratic affiliation would have also been perceived bycontemporary readers, from various classes and with differingpolitical tendencies. The translation was cited in “AnAdvertisement of Books newly published” that appeared inMercurius Politicus, the widely circulated newsweekly licensed byParliament to present a propagandistic survey of current events(Frank 1961:205–210, 223–226). The notice revealed the translator’sidentity and used the title “Esquire,” indicating not only his statusas a gentleman, but perhaps his legal education as well: “TheDestruction of Troy, an Essay upon the second Book of Virgils Æneis.Written by JOHN DENHAM, Esquire” (Mercurius Politicus: 6921).The social functioning of Denham’s translation becomes clear whenhis preface is considered in a broader context of translation theory andpractice during the seventeenth century. The first point to observe isthat Denham’s “way of translating” was hardly “new” in 1656. He wasfollowing Horace’s dictum in Ars Poetica that the poet should avoidany word-for-word rendering: “For, being a Poet, thou maist feigne,create,/Not care, as thou wouldst faithfully translate,/To render wordfor word”—in Ben Jonson’s un-Horatian, line-by-line version from1605 (Jonson 1968:287). But where Horace took translation as onepractice of the poet, Denham took poetry as the goal of translation,especially poetry translation: “I conceive it a vulgar error in translating