venuti

Canon 85lampoon of Roman times” (ibid.)—would not be persuasive to hiscontemporaries, since such a reader already had access to the Latintext; perhaps the claim should be viewed less as a rationale than as areflection of Nott’s own scholarly bent, his wish to address anacademic audience. His main concern seems to have been twofold: toward against an ethnocentric response to the Latin text and preserve itshistorical and cultural difference:When an ancient classic is translated, and explained, the work maybe considered as forming a link in the chain of history: historyshould not be falsified, we ought therefore to translate him fairly;and when he gives us the manners of his own day, howeverdisgusting to our sensations, and repugnant to our natures they maysometimes prove, we must not endeavour to conceal, or gloss themover, through a fastidious regard to delicacy.(ibid.:x–xi)Nott’s sense of historical accuracy assumed a mimetic concept oftranslation as a representation adequate to the foreign text. In 1795, thismimetic assumption was beginning to seem dated in English poetictheory, a throwback to an older empiricism, challenged now byexpressive theories of poetry and original genius. 14 And yet Nott’sadherence to a residual theoretical assumption enabled him to resistthe pressure of bourgeois moral values on his translation.In 1821, Lamb possessed a more contemporary, romantic sense ofauthorial authenticity that projected an expressive concept oftranslation as adequately communicating the foreign author’spsychological state. Catullus’s “compositions, few as they are,probably express his feelings upon every important event of his shortcareer,” Lamb believed, and this led him to conclude that the Latinpoet “seems to have been as little sullied by the grossness of the age, aswas possible […] pure indeed must that mind naturally have been,which, amidst such coarseness of manners, could preserve so muchexpressive delicacy and elevated refinement” (Lamb 1821: I, xlii–xliii).Lamb’s expressive poetics underwrote not only his belief in the poet’spurity, both moral and stylistic, but also his advocacy of a freetranslation method that effected the illusion of transparency whiledomesticating the Latin text. Explicitly situating himself in the maintradition of fluent translation from Denham to Johnson, Lamb statedthat “the natural course of translation is, first to secure its fidelity, andthen to attempt the polish of elegance and freedom” (ibid.:lviii). Hence,