Still I shall be told, that this scheme, though practicable, is too difficult to permit the hope of its being ever put in execution. Perhaps it may be so. And what then? Because passages that convey improper indeas may be found in some ancient writings, shall we deprive young people of all the instruction and pleasure that attends a regular course of classical study? Because Horace wrote some paltry lines, and Ovid some worthless poems, must Virgil, and Livy, and Cicero, and Plutarch, and Homer, be consigned to oblivion? I do not here speak of the beauties of the Greek and Latin authors, nor of the vast disproportion there is between what is good in them, and what is bad. In every thing human there is a mixture of evil: but are we for that reason to throw off all concern about human things? Must we set our harvests on fire, or leave them to perish, because a few tares have sprung up with the corn? Because oppression will sometimes take place wherever there is subordination, and luxury wherever there is security, are we therefore to renounce all government ?—or shall we, according to the advice of certain famous projectors, run naked to the woods, and there encounter every hardship and brutality of savage life, in order to escape from the tooth-ach and rheumatism? If we reject every useful institution that may possibly be attended with inconvenience, we must reject all bodily exercise, and all bodily rest, all arts and sciences, all law, commerce, and society.

If the present objection prove any thing decisive against ancient literature, it will prove a great deal more against the modern. Of classical indecency compared with that of latter times, I do not think so favourably as did a certain critick, who likened the former to the nakedness of a child, and the latter to that of a prostitute; I think there is too much of the last character in both but that the modern muses partake of it more than the ancient, is undeniable. I do not care to prove what I say, by a detail of particulars; and am sorry to add, that the point is too plain to require proof. And if so, may not an early acquaintance with the best ancient authors, as teachers of wisdom, and models of good taste, be highly useful as a preservative from the sophistries aud immoralities. that disgrace some of our fashionable moderns? If a true taste for classick learning shall ever become general, the demand for licentious plays, poems, and novels, will abate in proportion; for it is to the more illiterate readers that

this sort of trash is most acceptable. Study, so ignominious and so debasing, so unworthy of a scholar and of a man, so repugnant to good taste and good manners, will hardly engage the attention of those who can relish the original magnificence of Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero.

A book is of some value, if it yield harmless amusement; it is still more valuable, if it communicate instruction; but if it answer both purposes, it is truly a matter of importance to mankind. That many of the classick authors possessed the art of blending sweetness with utility, has been the opinion of all men without exception, who had sense and learning sufficient to qualify them to be judges. Is history instructive and entertaining? We have from these authors a detail of the most important events unfolded in the most interesting manner. Without the histories they have left us, we should have been both ignorant of their affairs, and unskilled in the art of recording our own: for I think it is allowed, that the best modern histories are those which in form are most similar to the ancient models.-Is philosophy a source of improvement and delight? The Greeks and Romans have given us, I shall not say the most useful, but I will say the fundamental, part of human science; have led us into a train of thinking, which of ourselves we should not so soon have taken to ; and have set before us an endless multitude of examples and inferences, which, though not exempt from errour, do however suggest the proper methods of observation and profitable inquiry. Let those, who undervalue the discoveries of antiquity, only think, what our condition at this day must have been, if, in the ages of darkness that followed the destruction of the Roman empire, all the literary monuments of Greece and Italy had perished.-Again, is there any thing productive of utility and pleasure, in the fictions of poetry, and in the charms of harmonious composition? Surely, it cannot be doubted; nor will they, who have any knowledge of the history of learning, hesitate to affirm, that the modern Europeans are almost wholly indebted for the beauty of their writings both in prose and verse, to those models of elegance that first appeared in Greece, and have since been admired and imitated all over the western world. It is a striking fact, that while in other parts of the earth there prevails a form of language, so disguised by figures, and so darkened by incoherence, as to be quite unsuitable to philosophy, and even in

poetry tiresome, the Europeans should have been so long in possession of a style, in which harmony, perspicuity, simplicity, and elegance, are so happily united. That the Romans and modern Europeans had it from the Greeks, is well known; but whence those fathers of literature derived it, is not so apparent, and would furnish matter for too long a digression, if we were here to inquire.-In a word, the Greeks and Romans are our masters in all polite literature; a consideration, which of itself ought to inspire reverence for their writings and genius.

Good translations are very useful; but the best of them will not render the study of the original authors either unnecessary or unprofitable. This might be proved by many arguments.

All living languages are liable to change. The Greek and Latin, though composed of more durable materials than ours, were subject to perpetual vicissitude, till they ceased to be spoken. The former is with reason believed to have been more stationary than any other; and indeed a very particular attention was paid to the preservation of it yet between Spenser and Pope, Hooker and Sherlock, Raleigh and Smollet, a difference of dialect is not more perceptible, than between Homer and Apollonius, Xenophon and Plutarch, Aristotle and Antoninus. In the Roman authors the change of language is still more remarkable. How different, in this respect, is Ennius from Virgil, Lucilius from Horace, Cato from Columella, and even Catullus from Ovid! The laws of the twelve tables, though studied by every Roman of condition, were not perfectly understood even by antiquarians, in the time of Cicero, when they were not quite four hundred years old. Cicero himself, as well as Lucretius, made several improvements in the Latin tongue; Virgil introduced some new words; and Horace asserts his right to the same privilege; and from his remarks upon it,* appears to have considered the immutability of living language as an impossible thing. It were vain then to flatter ourselves with the hope of permanency to any of the modern tongues of Europe; which, being more ungrammatical than the Latin and Greek, are exposed to more dangerous, because less discernible innovations. Our want of tenses and cases makes a multitude of auxiliary words necessary; and to these the unlearned are

* Hor. Ar. Poet. vers. 46.-72.

not attentive, because they look upon them as the least important parts of language; and hence they come to be omitted or misapplied in conversation, and afterwards in writing. Besides, the spirit of commerce, manufacture, and naval enterprize, so honourable to modern Europe, and to Great Britain in particular, and the free circulation of arts, sciences, and opinions, owing in part to the use of printing, and to our improvements in navigation, cannot fail to render the modern tongues, and especially the English, more variable than the Greek or Latin. Much indeed has been done of late to ascertain and fix the English tongue. Johnson's dictionary is a most important, and, considered as the work of one man, a most wonderful performance. It does honour to England, and to human genius; and proves, that there is still left among us a force of mind equal to that which formerly distinguished a Stephanus or a Varro. Its influence in diffusing the knowledge of the language, and retarding its decline, is already observable :

Si Pergama dextra

Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.

And yet, within the last twenty years, and since this great work was published, a multitude of new words have found their into the English tongue, and, though both unauthorised and unnecessary, seem likely to remain in it.

way

In this fluctuating state of the modern languages, and of our own in particular, what could we expect from translations, if the study of Greek and Latin were to be discontinued? Suppose all the good books of antiquity translated into English, and the originals destroyed, or, which is nearly the same thing, neglected. That English grows obsolete in one century; and, in two, that translation must be retranslated. If there were faults in the first, and I never heard of a faultless translation, they must be multiplied tenfold in the second. So that, within a few centuries, there is reason to fear, that all the old authors would be either lost, or so mangled as to be hardly worth preserving.-A system of geometry, one would think, must lose less in a tolerable translation, than any other science. Political ideas are somewhat variable; moral notions are ambiguous in their names at least, if not in themselves; the abstruser sciences speak a language still more indefinite but ideas of number and quantity must for ever

remain distinct. And yet some late authors have thrown light upon geometry, by reviving the study of the Greek geometricians. Let any man read a translation of Cicero and Livy, and then study the author in his own tongue; and he shall find himself not only more delighted with the manner, but also more fully instructed in the matter.

Beauty of style, and harmony of verse, would decay at the first translation, and at the second or third be quite lost. It is not possible for one who is ignorant of Latin to have any adequate notion of Virgil; the choice of his words, and the modulation of his numbers, have never been copied with tolerable success in any other tongue. Homer has been of all poets the most fortunate in a translator; his fable, descriptions, and pathos, and, for the most part, his characters, we find in Pope but we find not his simplicity, nor his impetuosity, nor that majestick inattention to the more trivial niceties of style, which is so graceful in him, but which no other poet dares imitate. Homer in Greek seems to sing extempore, and from immediate inspiration, or enthusiasm ;* but in English his phraseology and numbers are not a little elaborate : which I mention, not with any view to detract from the translator, who truly deserves the highest praise, but to show the insufficiency of modern language to convey a just idea of ancient writing.-I need not enlarge on this subject: it is well known, that few of the great authors of antiquity have ever been adequately translated. No man who understands Plato, Demosthenes, or Xenophon, in the Greek, or Livy, Cicero, and Virgil, in the Latin, would willingly peruse even the best translations of those authors.

If one mode of composition be better than another, which will scarce be denied, it is surely worth while to preserve a standard of that which is best. This cannot be done, but by preserving the original authors; and they cannot be said to be preserved, unless they be studied and understood. Translations are like portraits. They may give some idea of the lineaments and colour, but the life and the motion they cannot

"His poems (says a very learned writer) were made to be recited, or sung to a company; and not read in private, or perused in a book, which few were then capable of doing and I will venture to affirm, that whoever reads not Homer in this view, loses a great part of the delight he might receive from the poet." Blackwell's Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, p. 122.