The Lovers Assistant; Or, New Art of LoveFielding, Henry
General
The Lovers Assistant; Or, New Art of Love
Fielding, Henry
Seduction -- Poetry
In 1759, the work was reissued in London and Dublin, under the title
_The Lover's Assistant_, and again in London in 1760. Meanwhile,
advertisements for the original edition, as by Henry Fielding, had
been run by the publisher, Andrew Millar, in 1754 and 1758. Inasmuch
as Millar apparently still had unsold sheets in 1758, the 1759 edition
may comprise these sheets with new title pages and prefatory matter
necessary because of Fielding's death in 1754. At any rate, the
"modern instances" referred to by the author of the 1759 Preface are
not too modern to have been written in 1747. There has been no reprint
since 1760.
The present text is printed from the 1760 edition, collated with a
copy of the 1759 issue. The Latin text, which in the original faces
the English, is omitted. Notes keyed by letters and asterisks appear
in the original; it will be noted that Fielding's notes combine
scholarly and facetious remarks; he frequently used footnotes for
comic effect, especially in the translation of the _Plutus_ of
Aristophanes in which he collaborated.
Literature affords few pleasures so satisfying as translations done by
those who are not only expert in the languages concerned, but who also
are of the same spirit as the authors they translate. Some examples
come readily to mind: Pope's Horace, Dryden's Juvenal and Persius,
Smollett's LeSage, Lang's _Aucassin and Nicolette_, and Pound's
translations from Provençal. Such a felicitous combination appears in
Henry Fielding's translation of Book I of Ovid's _Ars Amoris_.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English
translators of the classics abounded, including Marlowe, Jonson,
Chapman and Sandys; Roscommon, Waller, Denham, Cowley and Dryden. By
1700, the major kinds of translation had been differentiated,
described, evaluated and practised.
To summarize, Dryden wrote as follows in his Preface to the 1680
edition of _Ovid's Epistles_, Translated by Several Hands:
All translation I suppose may be reduced to these three
heads:
First, that of Metaphrase, or turning an Author word by
word, and line by line, from one language to another.... The
second way is that of Paraphrase, or Translation with
Latitude, where the Author is kept in view by the
Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so
strictly follow'd as his sense, and that too is admitted to
be amplyfied, but not alter'd.... The Third way is that of
Imitation, where the Translator (if now [i.e. by taking such
liberties] he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty
not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake
them both as he sees occasion: and taking only some general
hints from the Original, to run division on the ground-work,
as he pleases....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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