Chapter I: Introduction

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, author of the present essay on Translation, and of various works on Universal and on Local History, was one of that Edinburgh circle which was revolving when Sir Walter Scott was a young probationer. Tytler was born at Edinburgh, October 15, 1747, went to the High School there, and after two years at Kensington, under Elphinston—Dr. Johnson’s Elphinston—entered Edinburgh University (where he afterwards became Professor of Universal History). He seems to have been Elphinston’s favourite pupil, and to have particularly gratified his master, “the celebrated Dr. Jortin” too, by his Latin verse.

In 1770 he was called to the bar; in 1776 married a wife; in 1790 was appointed Judge-Advocate of Scotland; in 1792 became the master of Woodhouselee on the death of his father. Ten years later he was raised to the bench of the court of session, with his father’s title—Lord Woodhouselee. But the law was only the professional background to his other avocation—of literature. Like his father, something of a personage at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was before its members that he read the papers which were afterwards cast into the present work. In them we have all that is still valid of his very considerable literary labours. Before it appeared, his effect on his younger contemporaries in Edinburgh had already been very marked—if we may judge by Lockhart. His encouragement undoubtedly helped to speed Scott on his way, especially into that German romantic region out of which a new Gothic breath was breathed on the Scottish thistle.

It was in 1790 that Tytler read in the Royal Society his papers on Translation, and they were soon after published, without his name. Hardly had the work seen the light, than it led to a critical correspondence with Dr. Campbell, then Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen. Dr. Campbell had at some time previous to this published his Translations of the Gospels, to which he had prefixed some observations upon the principles of translation. When Tytler’s anonymous work appeared he was led to express some suspicion that the author might have borrowed from his Dissertation, without acknowledging the obligation. Thereupon Tytler instantly wrote to Dr. Campbell, acknowledging himself to be the author, and assuring him that the coincidence, such as it was, “was purely accidental, and that the name of Dr. Campbell’s work had never reached him until his own had been composed.... There seems to me no wonder,” he continued, “that two persons, moderately conversant in critical occupations, sitting down professedly to investigate the principles of this art, should hit upon the same principles, when in fact there are none other to hit upon, and the truth of these is acknowledged at their first enunciation. But in truth, the merit of this little essay (if it has any) does not, in my opinion, lie in these particulars. It lies in the establishment of those various subordinate rules and precepts which apply to the nicer parts and difficulties of the art of translation; in deducing those rules and precepts which carry not their own authority _in gremio_, from the general principles which are of acknowledged truth, and in proving and illustrating them by examples.”

Tytler has here put his finger on one of the critical good services rendered by his book. But it has a further value now, and one that he could not quite foresee it was going to have. The essay is an admirably typical dissertation on the classic art of poetic translation, and of literary style, as the eighteenth century understood it; and even where it accepts Pope’s Homer or Melmoth’s Cicero in a way that is impossible to us now, the test that is applied, and the difference between that test and our own, will be found, if not convincing, extremely suggestive. In fact, Tytler, while not a great critic, was a charming dilettante, and a man of exceeding taste; and something of that grace which he is said to have had personally is to be found lingering in these pages. Reading them, one learns as much by dissenting from some of his judgments as by subscribing to others. Woodhouselee, Lord Cockburn said, was not a Tusculum, but it was a country-house with a fine tradition of culture, and its quondam master was a delightful host, with whom it was a memorable experience to spend an evening discussing the _Don Quixote_ of Motteux and of Smollett, or how to capture the aroma of Virgil in an English medium, in the era before the Scottish prose Homer had changed the literary perspective north of the Tweed. It is sometimes said that the real art of poetic translation is still to seek; yet one of its most effective demonstrators was certainly Alexander Fraser Tytler, who died in 1814.

The following is his list of works:

Piscatory Eclogues, with other Poetical Miscellanies of
Phinehas Fletcher, illustrated with notes, critical and
explanatory, 1771; The Decisions of the Court of Sessions, from
its first Institution to the present Time, etc. (supplementary
volume to Lord Kames’s “Dictionary of Decisions”), 1778; Plan
and Outline of a Course of Lectures on Universal History,
Ancient and Modern (delivered at Edinburgh), 1782; Elements of
General History, Ancient and Modern (with table of Chronology
and a comparative view of Ancient and Modern Geography), 2
vols., 1801. A third volume was added by E. Nares, being a
continuation to death of George III., 1822; further editions
continued to be issued with continuations, and the work was
finally brought down to the present time, and edited by G.
Bell, 1875; separate editions have appeared of the ancient
and modern parts, and an abridged edition in 1809 by T. D.
Hincks. To Vols. I. and II. (1788, 1790) of the Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Tytler contributed History
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Life of Lord-President
Dundas, and An Account of some Extraordinary Structures on the
Tops of Hills in the Highlands, etc.; to Vol. V., Remarks on a
Mixed Species of Evidence in Matters of History, 1805; A Life
of Sir John Gregory, prefixed to an edition of the latter’s
works, 1788; Essay on the Principles of Translations, 1791,
1797; Third Edition, with additions and alterations, 1813;
Translation of Schiller’s “The Robbers,” 1792; A Critical
Examination of Mr. Whitaker’s Course of Hannibal over the
Alps, 1798; A Dissertation on Final Causes, with a Life of
Dr. Derham, in edition of the latter’s works, 1798; Ireland
Profiting by Example, or the Question Considered whether
Scotland has Gained or Lost by the Union, 1799; Essay on
Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial, 1800; Remarks
on the Writings and Genius of Ramsay (preface to edition of
works), 1800, 1851, 1866; Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
the Hon. Henry Horne, Lord Kames, 1807, 1814; Essay on the
Life and Character of Petrarch, with Translation of Seven
Sonnets, 1784; An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life
and Character of Petrarch, with a Translation of a few of his
Sonnets (including the above pamphlet and the dissertation
mentioned above in Vol. V. of Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.), 1812;
Consideration of the Present Political State of India, etc.,
1815, 1816. Tytler contributed to the “Mirror,” 1779-80, and to
the “Lounger,” 1785-6.

Life of Tytler, by Rev. Archibald Alison, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction 1

CHAPTER I

Description of a good Translation—General Rules flowing from
that description 7

CHAPTER II

First General Rule: A Translation should give a complete
transcript of the ideas of the original work—Knowledge of
the language of the original, and acquaintance with the
subject—Examples of imperfect transfusion of the sense of the
original—What ought to be the conduct of a Translator where the
sense is ambiguous 10

CHAPTER III

Whether it is allowable for a Translator to add to or retrench
the ideas of the original—Examples of the use and abuse of this
liberty 22

CHAPTER IV

Of the freedom allowed in poetical Translation—Progress of
poetical Translation in England—B. Jonson, Holiday, May,
Sandys, Fanshaw, Dryden—Roscommon’s Essay on Translated
Verse—Pope’s Homer 35

CHAPTER V

Second general Rule: The style and manner of writing in a
Translation should be of the same character with that of the
Original—Translations of the Scriptures—Of Homer, &c.—A just
Taste requisite for the discernment of the Characters of Style
and Manner—Examples of failure in this particular; The grave
exchanged for the formal; the elevated for the bombast; the
lively for the petulant; the simple for the childish—Hobbes,
L’Estrange, Echard, &c. 63

CHAPTER VI

Examples of a good Taste in poetical Translation—Bourne’s
Translations from Mallet and from Prior—The Duke de Nivernois,
from Horace—Dr. Jortin, from Simonides—Imitation of the same by
the Archbishop of York—Mr. Webb, from the Anthologia—Hughes,
from Claudian—Fragments of the Greek Dramatists by Mr.
Cumberland 80

CHAPTER VII

Limitation of the rule regarding the Imitation of Style—This
Imitation must be regulated by the Genius of Languages—The
Latin admits of a greater brevity of Expression than the
English; as does the French—The Latin and Greek allow of
greater Inversions than the English, and admit more freely of
Ellipsis 96

CHAPTER VIII

Whether a Poem can be well Translated into Prose? 107

CHAPTER IX

Third general Rule: A Translation should have all the ease of
original composition—Extreme difficulty in the observance of
this rule—Contrasted instances of success and failure—Of the
necessity of sacrificing one rule to another 112

CHAPTER X

It is less difficult to attain the ease of original composition
in poetical, than in Prose Translation—Lyric Poetry admits of
the greatest liberty of Translation—Examples distinguishing
Paraphrase from Translation, from Dryden, Lowth, Fontenelle,
Prior, Anguillara, Hughes 123

CHAPTER XI

Of the Translation of Idiomatic Phrases—Examples from Cotton,
Echard, Sterne—Injudicious use of Idioms in the Translation,
which do not correspond with the age or country of the
Original—Idiomatic Phrases sometimes incapable of Translation 135

CHAPTER XII

Difficulty of translating _Don Quixote_, from its Idiomatic
Phraseology—Of the best Translations of that Romance—Comparison
of the Translation by Motteux with that by Smollett 150

CHAPTER XIII

Other Characteristics of Composition which render
Translation difficult—Antiquated Terms—New Terms—_Verba
Ardentia_—Simplicity of Thought and Expression—In Prose—In
Poetry—_Naiveté_ in the latter—Chaulieu—Parnelle—La
Fontaine—Series of Minute Distinctions marked by characteristic
Terms—Strada—Florid Style, and vague expression—Pliny’s Natural
History 176

CHAPTER XIV

Of Burlesque Translation—Travesty and Parody—Scarron’s _Virgile
Travesti_—Another species of Ludicrous Translation 197

CHAPTER XV

The genius of the Translator should be akin to that of the
original author—The best Translators have shone in original
composition of the same species with that which they have
translated—Of Voltaire’s Translations from Shakespeare—Of the
peculiar character of the wit of Voltaire—His Translation
from _Hudibras_—Excellent anonymous French Translation of
_Hudibras_—Translation of Rabelais by Urquhart and Motteux 204

Appendix 225

Index 231

ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION