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74 The Translator’s Invisibilityfor the most part, so evidently dictated by good sense, and soconsonant to correct taste, as to admit of little dispute; and theexamples, by which they are illustrated, are very judiciouslyselected and properly applied,” “sufficient to convince everyreader of good taste, that the volume will repay the trouble of adiligent perusal of the whole” (ibid.:363, 366).Although both of these reviewers expressed some doubts aboutTytler’s recommendation that the translator edit or “improve” theforeign text, neither found this editing questionable because of thedomestication it involved. On the contrary, the question was thespecific nature of the domestication, with both offering reasonsfirmly grounded in domestic translation agendas. The reviewer forthe Monthly Review suggested that Tytler’s “improvements” of theforeign text might interfere with the improvement of tasteperformed by translation, “the great end of which undoubtedly is togive the unlearned reader a correct idea of the merit of the original”(Monthly Review 1792:363). The reviewer for the European Magazinewas less didactic but equally snobbish in his wish to preserve theclassical text in a pure, unmediated state: “Such ornaments appearto us like modern gilding laid upon one of the finest statues ofantiquity” (European Magazine 1792:188). This antiquarianism,although based on an idealized concept of the past, was actuallyserving contemporary social interests, labouring, somewhatcontradictorily, under the valorization of transparent discourse inelite literary culture, recommending translations that seem toreproduce the foreign text perfectly: “the sober sense of criticism[…] bids a translator to be the faithful mirror of his original”(ibid.:189).Tytler’s importance in the canonization of fluent translationis perhaps most clearly indicated by George Campbell’sadherence to the same “principles” in his two-volume versionof the Gospels. Campbell’s was undoubtedly one of the mostpopular English translations of its time: between 1789, when itwas first issued, and 1834, fifteen editions appeared in Britainand the United States. The massive first volume containedCampbell’s “Preliminary Dissertations” on such issues as “Thechief Things to be attended to in translating” (“Dissertation theTenth,” 445–519). The closeness to Tytler’s recommendations isremarkable: