Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/229

How miserably does the new translator sink in the above comparison! Yet Smollet was a good poet, and most of the verse translations interspersed through this work are executed with ability. It is on this head that Motteux has assumed to himself the greatest licence. He has very presumptuously mutilated the poetry of Cervantes, by leaving out many entire stanzas from the larger compositions, and suppressing some of the smaller altogether: Yet the translation of those parts which he has retained, is possessed of much poetical merit; and in particular, those verses which are of a graver call, are, in my opinion, superior to those of his rival. The song in the first volume, which in the original is intitled Cancion de Grisóstomo, and which Motteux has intitled, The Despairing Lover, isgreatly