It remains to speak of the Translation now submitted to the Public.
Fidelity has been the principal object of the Translator. If more be
demanded, he would shelter himself under the high name of Sir William
Jones. “Elegance, on a subject so delicate as Law, must be sacrificed,
without mercy, to exactness.” Next to fidelity, simplicity has been
aimed at, as most in unison with the original, and, perhaps, the best
adapted for transfusing its spirit into the English Language. Not that
with these two objects immediately before him, the Translator would
be understood as conceding, that he has sacrificed any beauty, any
elegance of expression generally abounding in, or spread over, the
original work. He could not sacrifice that which never existed. The
style of Glanville, destitute of every grace, and dry and harsh in the
extreme, professedly aims at the peculiar qualities which characterise
it. _Stilo vulgari et verbis curialibus utens ex industria, ad notitiam
comparandum eis, qui hujusmodi vulgaritate minus sunt exercitati_,
are the very terms in which he describes his own manner of writing.
So successfully has he accomplished his object, that he imposes upon
his Translator a Task not altogether unlike that of acquiring a new
language. Yet to these difficulties the Translator reluctantly alludes,
for though they may, in some measure, atone for those errors into which
he is apprehensive he has often fallen, he is conscious, the merit of
his attempt is not to be estimated by its arduousness, but its utility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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