Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/244

that a poet, eminent as an original author in his own country, may fail remarkably in attempting to convey, by a translation, an idea of the merits of a foreign work which is tinctured by the national genius of the country which produced it. Of this we have a striking example in those translations from Shakespeare by Voltaire; in which the French poet, great himself in dramatical composition, intended to convey to his countrymen a just idea of our most celebrated author in the same department. But Shakespeare and Voltaire, though perhaps akin to each other in some of the great features of the mind, were widely distinguished even by nature, in the characters of their poetical genius; and this natural distinction was still more sensibly encreased by the general tone of manners, the hue andfashion