which I publicly valued before I knew the author of it, and with the commendation of which my Lord Roscommon so happily begins his "Essay on Translated Verse;" the other is no less than our admired Cowley, who says the same thing in other words; for, in his "Ode concerning Wit," he writes thus of it: Much less can that have any place, At which a virgin hides her face; Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just The author blush, there, where the reader must. Here indeed Mr Cowley goes farther than the Essay; for he asserts plainly, that obscenity has no place in wit; the other only says, it is a poor pretence to it, or an ill sort of wit, which has nothing more to support it than bare-faced ribaldry; which is both unmannerly in itself, and fulsome to the reader. But neither of these will reach my case: for, in the first place, I am only the translator, not the inventor; so that the heaviest part of the censure falls upon Lucretius, before it reaches me: in the next place, neither he nor I have used the grossest words, but the cleanliest metaphors we could find, to palliate the broadness of the meaning; and, to conclude, have carried the poetical part no farther, than the philosophical exacted.[53] There is one mistake of mine, which I will not lay to the printer's charge, who has enough to answer for in false pointings; it is in the word, _viper_: I would have the verse run thus: The scorpion, love, must on the wound be bruised.[54] There are a sort of blundering, half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism: ----_non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parùm cavit natura._