I was almost Bankrupt. So that the latter end must needs be more burdensom than the beginning or the middle. And consequently the Twelfth Æneid cost me double the time of the first and second. What had become of me, if Virgil had tax'd me with another Book? I had certainly been reduc'd to pay the Publick in hammer'd Money for want of Mill'd; that is in the same old Words which I had us'd before: And the Receivers must have been forc'd to have taken any thing, where there was so little to be had.
Besides this difficulty (with which I have struggled, and made a shift to pass it over) there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all Translators. We are bound to our Author's Sense, though with the latitudes already mention'd (for I think it not so sacred, as that one Iota must not be added or diminish'd on pain of an Anathema.) But Slaves we are; and labour on another Man's Plantation; we dress the Vine-yard, but the Wine is the Owners: If the Soil be sometimes Barren, then we are sure of being scourg'd: If it be fruitful, and our Care succeeds, we are not thank'd; for the proud Reader will only say, the poor drudge has done his duty. But this is nothing to what follows; for being oblig'd to make his Sense intelligible, we are forc'd to untune our own Verses, that we may give his meaning to the Reader. He who Invents is Master of his Thoughts and Words: He can turn and vary them as he pleases, 'till he renders them harmonious. But the wretched Translator has no such priviledge: For being ty'd to the Thoughts, he must make what Musick he can in the Expression. And for this reason it cannot always be so sweet as that of the Original. There is a beauty of Sound, as Segrais has observ'd, in some Latin Words, which is wholly lost in any Modern Language. He instances in that Mollis Amaracus, on which Venus lays Cupid in the First Æneid.
