/lit/ - Literature

Few Persons were ever more familiarly acquainted with the <i>Æneis</i>, had a truer Gust, and Relish of it's Beauties, or enter'd more deeply into the Sentiments, into the very Souls and Spirit of it's Author, than Monsieur <i>Segrais</i>. His Preface is altogether admirable; and his Translation perhaps almost as good as the <i>French</i> Language will allow; which is just as fit for an Epic Poem, as an ambling Nag is for a War-Horse. It is indeed my Opinion of the <i>French</i>; that non write better <i>of</i> Poetry, and few (as to <i>Meter</i>) worse <i>in</i> it. Their Language is excellent for Prose; but quite otherwise for Verse, especially Heroic. And therefore tho’ the Translating of Poems into Prose is a strange, modern Invention; yet the <i>French</i> Transposers are in the right; because their Language will not bear Verse.