In certain matters, however, the translator claimed especial freedom. "A work of this nature," says Trapp of his translation of the _Aeneid_, "is to be regarded in two different views, both as a poem and as a translated poem." This gives the translator some latitude. "The thought and contrivance are his author's, but his language and the turn of his versification are his own."[435] Pope holds the same opinion. A translator must "give his author entire and unmaimed" but for the rest the diction and versification are his own province.[436] Such a dictum was sure to meet with approval, for dignity of language and smoothness of verse were the very qualities on which the period prided itself. It was in these respects that translators hoped to improve on the work of the preceding age. Fawkes, the translator of Theocritus, believes that many lines in Dryden's _Miscellany_ "will sound very harshly in the polished ears of the present age," and that Creech's translation of his author can be popular only with those who "having no ear for poetical numbers, are better pleased with the rough music of the last age than the refined harmony of this." Johnson, who strongly approved of Dryden's performance, accepts it as natural that there should be other attempts at the translation of Virgil, "since the English ear has been accustomed to the mellifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction of poetry has become more splendid."[437] There was something of poetic justice in this attitude towards the seventeenth century, itself so unappreciative of the achievements of earlier translators, but exemplified in practice, it showed the peculiar limitations of the age of Pope.