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TRANSLATIONS.

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The Translations.

THE following stories from Ovid, which are now printed as specimens of a translation of his Metamorphoses, completed by the Author, are not intended to be literally rendered from the Latin: it has been the object of the Author, allowing for the dissimilarity of the Latin and English languages, to give an impression to readers in the latter analogous to that which the original might be supposed to give to those in the former; and he has always been particularly careful not to suffer any peculiar beauties of sentiment, description, or phraseology escape his notice.

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The Metamorphoses in the original are written in a style highly artificial: the Author, therefore, in his translation has rather preferred the adopting a smooth and even versification, to the more

loose, easy, and natural one, which latterly has been so much in vogue.

The great merits of Ovid in the work now referred to, are, a developement of an exquisite sense of physical beauty; highly decorated, and sometimes almost voluptuous description: where the subject requires it, as in the Death of Hercules, and the contest of Ulysses and Ajax for the arms of Achilles, a command of great strength of language; and an almost unrivalled power of describing the passions in a state of oscillation, or rather the feelings of the mind, when strongly solicited by vehement passion to forego deeply rooted principle. As he is more metaphysical than most of the Latin poets, so perhaps in his writings more than in almost any of those of the others, passages frequently occur apposite to the different experiences of life, and which the reader would be desirous to treasure in his memory.

The Author might add, that he was, in some measure, induced to print a few of the stories from Ovid, together with his own Poems, from the consideration that the latter are so exclusively of a sentimental and meditative cast, that he thought the former might afford no unacceptable variety to the volume to some readers; especially

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