Besides this difficulty (with which I have struggled, and made a shift to pass it over,) there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all translators. We are bound to our author's sense, though with the latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred, as that one _iota_ must not be added or diminished, on pain of an _anathema_. But slaves we are, and labour on another man's plantation; we dress the vineyard, but the wine is the owner's: if the soil be sometimes barren, then we are sure of being scourged: if it be fruitful, and our care succeeds, we are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say, the poor drudge has done his duty. But this is nothing to what follows; for, being obliged to make his sense intelligible, we are forced to untune our own verses, that we may give his meaning to the reader. He, who invents, is master of his thoughts and words: he can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he renders them harmonious; but the wretched translator has no such privilege: for, being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can in the expression; and, for this reason, it cannot always be so sweet as that of the original. There is a beauty of sound, as Ségrais has observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern language. He instances in that _mollis amaracus_, on which Venus lays Cupid, in the First Æneïd. If I should translate it _sweet-marjoram,_ as the word signifies, the reader would think I had mistaken Virgil: for those village-words, as I may call them, give us a mean idea of the thing; but the sound of the Latin is so much more pleasing, by the just mixture of the vowels with the consonants, that it raises our fancies to conceive somewhat more noble than a common herb, and to spread roses under him, and strew lilies over him; a bed not unworthy the grandson of the goddess. If I cannot copy his harmonious numbers, how shall I imitate his noble flights, where his thoughts and words are equally sublime? _Quem_ ----_quisquis studet æmulari, ----cæratis ope Dædaleâ Nititur pennis, vitreo daturus Nomina ponto_. What modern language, or what poet, can express the majestic beauty of this one verse, amongst a thousand others? _Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum Finge deo._---- For my part, I am lost in the admiration of it: I contemn the world when I think on it, and myself when I translate it.[86]