But this consideration of our modern critics has led me astray, and made me insensibly deviate from the subject before me; the modesty or caution of the anonymous translators of the following work. Whatever the motive of concealing their names may be, I shall not determine; but it is certain, nothing could more contribute to make a perfect version of Lucian, than a confederacy of many men of parts and learning to do him justice. It seems a task too hard for any one to undertake; the burden would indeed be insupportable, unless we did what the French have done in some of their translations, allow twenty years to perfect the work, and bestow all the brightest intervals, the most sprightly hours, to polish and finish the work.[51] But this has not been the fate of our author hitherto; for Lucian, that is the sincere example of attic eloquence, as Grævius says of him, is only a mass of solecism, and mere vulgarisms in Mr Spence.[52] I do not think it worth my while to rake into the filth of so scandalous a version; nor had I vouchsafed so much as to take notice of it, had it not been so gross an affront to the memory of Lucian, and so great a scandal to our nation. D’Ablancourt has taken a great deal of pains to furnish this intruder into print, with Lucian, in a language more known to him than Greek; nay, he has left him not one crabbed idiom to study for, since he has admirably clothed him in a garb more familiar to the moderns, still keeping the sense of his author in view. But in spite of all these helps, these leading-strings were not sufficient to keep Mr Spence from falling to the ground every step he made; while he makes him speak in the style and language of a jack-pudding, not a master of eloquence, admired for it through all the ages since he wrote. But too much of this trifler. I have said enough already of the version of the learned Dr Mayne, to shew my approbation of it; but it is only a select parcel of Lucian’s Dialogues which pleased him most, but far from the whole. As for any other translation, if there be any such in our language, it is what I never saw,[53] and suppose it must be antiquated, or of so inferior a degree, as not even to rival Spence. The present translation, as far as I can judge by what I have seen, is no way inferior to Ablancourt’s, and in many things is superior. It has indeed the advantage of appearing in a language more strong and expressive than French, and by the hands of gentlemen who perfectly understand him and their own language.