of his must demand. Besides this, as much more time was now elapsed since I had perused the copy, my own eye was become more open to its defects. I found the rule which my author had given to his Painter full as useful to a writer : (Ast ubi consilium deerit sapientis amici, Id tempus dabit, atque mora intermissa labori.) And I may say, with truth, that having become from this circumstance, as impartial, if not as fastidious, to my own work, as any other critick could possibly have been, I hardly left a single line in it without giving it, what I thought an emendation. It is not, therefore, as a juvenile work that I now present it to the publick, but as one which I have improved to the utmost of my mature abilities, in order to make it more worthy of its Annotator." In the preceding Epistle I have obviated, I hope, every suspicion of arrogance in attempting this work after Mr. Dryden. The single consideration that his version was in prose were in itself sufficient; because, as Mr. Pope has justly observed, verse and even rhyme is the best mode of conveying preceptive truths, as in this way they are more shortly expressed, and more easily retained *." Still less need I make an apology for undertaking it after Mr. Wills, who in the year 1754, published a translation of it in metre without rhyme†. This Gentleman, a Painter by profession, assumed for his motto, Tractant fabrilia fabri; * See his Advertisement before the Essay on Man. + I call it so rather than Blank Verse, because it was devoid of all harmony of numbers. The beginning, which I shall here insert, is a sufficient proof of the truth of this assertion: As Painting, Poesy, so similar To Poesy be Painting; emulous Alike, each to her sister doth refer, Alternate change the office and the name; From this little specimen the reader will easily form a judgement of the whole. 6 but however adroit he might be in hand the tools of his own art, candour mu. that the tools of a Poet and a translator w beyond his management: attempting also a task absolutely impossible, that of expressing the sense of his author in an equal number of lines, he produced a version, which (if it was ever read through by any person except myself) is now totally forgotten. Nevertheless I must do him the justice to own that he understood the original text; that he detected some errors in Mr. Dryden's translation, which had escaped Mr. Jervas (assisted, as it is said, by his friend Mr. Pope) in that corrected edition which Mr. Graham inscribed to the Earl of Burlington; and that I have myself sometimes profited by his labours. It is also from his edition that I reprint the following Life of the Author, which was drawn up from Felibien and other Biographers by the late Dr. Birch, who, with his usual industry, has collected all they have said on Fresnoy's subject. THE LIFE OF MONS. DU FRESNOY. His CHARLES ALPHONSE DU FRESNOY was born at Paris in the year 1611. father, who was an eminent apothecary in that city, intending him for the profession of physick, gave him as good an education as possible. During the first year, which he spent at the college, he made a very considerable progress in his studies: but as soon as he was raised to the higher classes, and began to contract a taste of poetry, his genius for it opened itself, and he carried all the prizes in it, which were proposed to excite the emulation of his fellow-students. His inclination for it was heightened by exercise; and his earliest performances showed, that he was |