We are in this disquisition naturally tempted to inquire, whether Dryden would have succeeded in his proposed design to translate Homer, as happily as in his Virgil?  And although he himself more fiery, and therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent, he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the AEneid.  If a translator has any characteristic and peculiar foible, it is surely unfortunate to choose an original, who may give peculiar facilities to exhibit them.  Thus, even Dryden’s repeated disclamation of puns, points, and quibbles, and all the repentance of his more sober hours, was unable, so soon as he began to translate Ovid, to prevent his sliding back into the practice of that false wit with which his earlier productions are imbued.  Hence he has been seduced, by the similarity of style, to add to the offences of his original, and introduce, though it needed not, points of wit and antithetical prettinesses, for which he cannot plead Ovid’s authority.  For example, he makes Ajax say of Ulysses, when surrounded by the Trojans,

  “No wonder if he roared that all might hear,
  His elocution was increased by fear.”

The Latin only bears, conclamat socios. A little lower,

  “Opposui molem clypei, texique jacentem,”

is amplified by a similar witticism,

  “My broad buckler hid him from the foe,
  Even the shield trembled as he lay below.”

If, in translating Ovid, Dryden was tempted by the manner of his original to relapse into a youthful fault, which he had solemnly repented of and abjured, there is surely room to believe, that the simple and almost rude manners described by Homer, might have seduced him into coarseness both of ideas and expression, for which the studied, composed, and dignified style of the Aeneid gave neither opening nor apology.  That this was a fault which Dryden, with all his taste, never was able to discard, might easily be proved from various passages in his translations, where the transgression is on his own part altogether gratuitous.  Such is the well-known version of

    “Ut possessor agelli
  Diceret, hoec mea sunt, veteres migrate coloni,
  Nune vidi,” etc.

  “When the grim captain, with a surly tone,
  Cries out, Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone! 
  Kicked out, we set the best face on’t we could,” etc.

In translating the most indelicate passage of Lucretius, Dryden has rather enhanced than veiled its indecency.  The story of Iphis in the Metamorphoses is much more bluntly told by the English poet than by Ovid.  In short, where there was a latitude given for coarseness of description and expression, Dryden has always too readily laid hold of it.  The very specimen which he has given us of a version of Homer, contains many passages in which the antique Grecian simplicity is vulgarly and inelegantly rendered.  The Thunderer terms Juno