indeed of the very essence of translation, and the term itself implies
it. For which reason, if we suppress the sense of our original, and
force into its place our own, we may call our work an _imitation_, if
we please, or perhaps a _paraphrase_, but it is no longer the same
author only in a different dress, and therefore it is not translation.
Should a painter, professing to draw the likeness of a beautiful
woman, give her more or fewer features than belong to her, and a
general cast of countenance of his own invention, he might be said to
have produced a _jeu d'esprit_, a curiosity perhaps in its way, but by
no means the lady in question.

It will however be necessary to speak a little more largely to this
subject, on which discordant opinions prevail even among good judges.

The free and the close translation have, each, their advocates. But
inconveniences belong to both. The former can hardly be true to the
original author's style and manner, and the latter is apt to be
servile. The one loses his peculiarities, and the other his spirit.
Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact medium, a manner so
close that it should let slip nothing of the text, nor mingle any
thing extraneous with it, and at the same time so free as to have an
air of originality, this seems precisely the mode in which an author
might be best rendered. I can assure my readers from my own
experience, that to discover this very delicate line is difficult, and
to proceed by it when found, through the whole length of a poet
voluminous as HOMER, nearly impossible. I can only pretend to have
endeavored it.

It is an opinion commonly received, but, like many others, indebted
for its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a translator