Note 3 — INTRODUCTION

When the first edition of this Essay was published, the Author had not seen Dr. Campbell’s new translation of the Gospels, a most elaborate and learned work, in one of the preliminary dissertations to which, that ingenious writer has treated professedly “Of the chief things to be attended to in translating.” The general laws of the art as briefly laid down in the first part of that dissertation are individually the same with those contained in this Essay; a circumstance which, independently of that satisfaction which always arises from finding our opinions warranted by the concurring judgement of persons of distinguished ingenuity and taste, affords a strong presumption that those opinions are founded in nature and in common sense. Another work on the same subject had likewise escaped the Author’s observation when he first published this Essay; an elegant poem on translation, by Mr. Francklin, the ingenious translator of Sophocles and Lucian. It is, however, rather an apology of the art, and a vindication of its just rank in the scale of literature, than a didactic work explanatory of its principles. But above all, the Author has to regret, that, in spite of his most diligent research, he has never yet been fortunate enough to meet with the work of a celebrated writer, professedly on the subject of translation, the treatise of M. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, De optimo genere interpretandi; of whose doctrines, however, he has some knowledge, from a pretty full extract of his work in the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Grammaire et Litterature, article Traduction.