BY WILLIAM HOLWELL B. D. F. A. S. OXFORD: PRINTED FOR J. AND J. FLETCHER IN THE TURLE: THE following learned and ingenious Letters, written and published by the late Mr. Melmoth, under the name of Sir Thomas Fitzofborne, will not, it is apprehended, be unacceptable to the Reader. I LETTER XX. T EUPHRONI U S. HAVE often mentioned to you the pleasure I received from Mr. Pope's tranflation of the Iliad: but my admi ration of that inimitable performance has increased upon me, fince you tempted me to compare the copy with the original. To fay of this noble, work, that it is the beft which ever appeared of the kind, would be speaking in much lower terms than it deferves; the world perhaps fcarce ever before saw a truly poetical tranflation: for, as Denham obferves, Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few, but thofe who cannot write, tranflate. Mr. Pope feems, in most places, to have been inspired with the fame fublime fpirit that animates his original; as he often takes fire from a fingle hint in his author, and blazes out even with a stronger and brighter flame of poetry. Thus the character of Therfites, as it ftands in the English Iliad, is heightened, I think, with more mafterly ftrokes of fatire than appear in the Greek; as many of thofe fimilies in • But, I prefume, the original bath more genuine fimplicity than the tranflation: the fame may be faid of the fimilies. The ingenious author of these letters Jeems to think that the tranflation is fuperior to the original. It may, perhaps, with greater juftice be faid, that Mr. Pope's tranflation of the Iliad is, upon the whole, fuperior to any translation of any book whatsoever. a 3 Homer, |