I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an original
writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim as the
translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the _Tale of Troy
divine_ in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language,
and in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many,
occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he
has done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in
the humble province of a translator that I thought it possible even
for me to fellow him with some advantage.

That he has sometimes altogether suppressed the sense of his author,
and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark
which, on this occasion, nothing but necessity should have extorted
from me. But we differ sometimes so widely in our matter, that unless
this remark, invidious as it seems, be premised, I know not how to
obviate a suspicion, on the one hand, of careless oversight, or of
factitious embellishment on the other. On this head, therefore, the
English reader is to be admonished, that the matter found in me,
whether he like it or not, is found also in HOMER, and that the matter
not found in me, how much soever he may admire it, is found only in
Mr. Pope. I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing.

There is indisputably a wide difference between the case of an
original writer in rhyme and a translator. In an original work the
author is free; if the rhyme be of difficult attainment, and he cannot
find it in one direction, he is at liberty to seek it in another; the
matter that will not accommodate itself to his occasions he may
discard, adopting such as will. But in a translation no such option is
allowable; the sense of the author is required, and we do not
surrender it willingly even to the plea of necessity. Fidelity is