DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.69192#0047
■ [ xxix J
have been almost as incurious and unknow-
ing as our original writers. For instance, Dry-
den in his famous transsation of Virgil, in some of
the allegorical persons m the original, misrepre-
sents their attributes and dress, and in others their
adions and attitudes. The belt of our poet's have
been apt sometimes to mix the natural and allego-
rical ways of speaking together. This is very
blameable in any poet, but is inexcusable in a trans-
lator, who has no right to represent his author
confused where he is clear: yet Dryden has (as
well as others) taken this liberty.
But the chief cause of the defeds and mis-
takes, both in our authors and transsators, is,
the want os a true idea of the real intent of the
allegories used by the antients, and of a right no-
tion of their scheme of machinery in general.
The opinion of the old poets seems to have
been, that every thing in the moral, as well as
the natural world, was carried on by the diredion
of the Supreme Being This universal prin-
ciple of adion they considered as divided into so
many several personages as they had occasion for
g Virgil, in the beginning of his TEneid, says every thing
that happened to his hero was <ui fuperum ; and Homer says the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon (and all its direful
donsequsnces) was by the will of Jove. Cicero, when he says,
“ Reason obliges us to own that every thing is done by fate,"
means just the same by that word as Homer does by Aio?
and Virgil by his Vi superum : Fatum est quod dii fantur, vel
quod Jupiter fatur. De Div. i. 55.
C 3 causes.
have been almost as incurious and unknow-
ing as our original writers. For instance, Dry-
den in his famous transsation of Virgil, in some of
the allegorical persons m the original, misrepre-
sents their attributes and dress, and in others their
adions and attitudes. The belt of our poet's have
been apt sometimes to mix the natural and allego-
rical ways of speaking together. This is very
blameable in any poet, but is inexcusable in a trans-
lator, who has no right to represent his author
confused where he is clear: yet Dryden has (as
well as others) taken this liberty.
But the chief cause of the defeds and mis-
takes, both in our authors and transsators, is,
the want os a true idea of the real intent of the
allegories used by the antients, and of a right no-
tion of their scheme of machinery in general.
The opinion of the old poets seems to have
been, that every thing in the moral, as well as
the natural world, was carried on by the diredion
of the Supreme Being This universal prin-
ciple of adion they considered as divided into so
many several personages as they had occasion for
g Virgil, in the beginning of his TEneid, says every thing
that happened to his hero was <ui fuperum ; and Homer says the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon (and all its direful
donsequsnces) was by the will of Jove. Cicero, when he says,
“ Reason obliges us to own that every thing is done by fate,"
means just the same by that word as Homer does by Aio?
and Virgil by his Vi superum : Fatum est quod dii fantur, vel
quod Jupiter fatur. De Div. i. 55.
C 3 causes.