We cannot help regretting on this occasion, that Dryden's fortune was not easy enough to enable him, with convenience and leisure, to pursue a work that might have proved an honour to himself, and reflected a portion thereof on all, who should have appeared his encouragers on this occasion.
In 1695 Mr. Dryden published a translation in prose of Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, with a preface containing a parallel between painting and poetry. Mr. Pope has addressed a copy of verses to Mr. Jervas in praise of Dryden's translation. In 1697 his translation of Virgil's works came out. This translation has passed thro' many editions, and of all the attempts which have been made to render Virgil into English. The critics, I think, have allowed that Dryden[5] best succeeded: notwithstanding as he himself says, when he began it, he was past the grand climacteric! so little influence it seems, age had over him, that he retained his judgment and fire in full force to the last. Mr. Pope in his preface to Homer says, if Dryden had lived to finish what he began of Homer, he, (Mr. Pope) would not have attempted it after him, 'No more, says he, than I would his Virgil, his version of whom (notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited translation I know in any language.'
Dr. Trap charges Mr. Dryden with grossly mistaking his author's sense in many places; with adding or retrenching as his turn is best served with either; and with being least a translator where he shines most as a poet; whereas it is a just rule laid down by lord Roscommon, that a translator in regard to his author should
Mr. Dryden, he tells us, frequently acts the very reverse of this precept, of which he produces some instances; and remarks in general, that the first six books of the Æneis, which are the best and most perfect in the original, are the least so in the translation. Dr. Trap's remarks may possibly be true; but in this he is an instance how easy it is to discover faults in other men's works, and how difficult to avoid them in our own.
Dr. Trap's translation is close, and conveys the author's meaning literally, so consequently may be fitter for a school-boy, but men of riper judgment, and superior taste, will hardly approve it; if Dryden's is the most spirited of any translation, Trap's is the dullest that ever was written; which proves that none but a good poet is fit to translate the works of a good poet.