The Dedication.
Your Noble Birth; and yet Both yield to the prevalence of your Good Temper, which with a like Indulgence receives the Homage of all sorts of Persons.
Upon this Foundation I presum'd to set Your Lordship's Name on the Frontispiece of this Work; to be to it, what you are to Your Country, its Ornament and Protection.
If ever your Lordship shall alienate so much of Your Time from the Public Good, as to read this Poem; You will find very Great, but necessary Variations from the Original; whether for the better or the worse, I submit to You, from whose Judgment there is no Appeal.
Nothing checks and deadens the Fancy more than a too superstitious Respect for the Original, especially in Poetry; It is commonly the Cause that an Idolatrous Translator (as la Motte calls such a one) endeavouring too exactly to render All the Beauties of his Author, gives you in Truth never a one. Every Minute Circumstance of a Thought cannot be preserv'd with any tolerable Grace, nor is it indeed necessary; pro-
vided
