Note 66 — Chapter XIII

The attempt, however, has been made. In a little volume, intitled Prolusiones Poeticæ, by the Reverend T. Bancroft, printed at Chester 1788, is a version of the Fidicinis et Philomelæ certamen, which will please every reader of taste who forbears to compare it with the original; and in the Poems of Pattison, the ingenious author of the Epistle of Abelard to Eloisa, is a fable, intitled, the Nightingale and Shepherd, imitated from Strada. But both these performances serve only to convince us, that a just translation of that composition is a thing almost impossible.