Note 20 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
I am happy to find this opinion, for which I have been blamed by some critics, supported by so respectable an authority as that of M. Delille; whose translation of the Georgics of Virgil, though censurable, (as I shall remark) in a few particulars, is, on the whole, a very fine performance: “Il faut etre quelquefois superieur à son original, précisément parce qu’on lui est très-inférieur.” Delille Disc. Prelim. à la Trad. des Georgiques. Of the same opinion is the elegant author of the poem on Translation.
Unless an author like a mistress warms, How shall we hide his faults, or taste his charms? How all his modest, latent beauties find; How trace each lovelier feature of the mind; Soften each blemish, and each grace improve, And treat him with the dignity of love? Francklin.