In opposition to these remarks, it may be urged, that there are examples of poems originally composed in prose, as Fenelon’s _Telemachus_. But to this we answer, that Fenelon, in composing his _Telemachus_, has judiciously adopted nothing more of the characteristics of poetry than what might safely be given to a prose composition. His good taste prescribed to him certain limits, which he was under no necessity of transgressing. But a translator is not left to a similar freedom of judgement: he must follow the footsteps of his original. Fenelon’s _Epic Poem_ is of a very different character from the _Iliad_, the _Æneid_, or the _Gierusalemme Liberata_. The French author has, in the conduct of his fable, seldom transgressed the bounds of historic probability; he has sparingly indulged himself in the use of the Epic machinery; and there is a chastity and sobriety even in his language, very different from the glowing enthusiasm that characterises the diction of the poems we have mentioned: We find nothing in the _Telemaque_ of the _Os magna sonaturum_.
The difficulty of translating poetry into prose, is different in its degree, according to the nature or species of the poem. Didactic poetry, of which the principal merit consists in the detail of a regular system, or in rational precepts which flow from each other in a connected train of thought, will evidently suffer least by being transfused into prose. But every didactic poet judiciously enriches his work with such ornaments as are not strictly attached to his subject. In a prose translation of such a poem, all that is strictly systematic or preceptive may be transfused with propriety; all the rest, which belongs to embellishment, will be found impertinent and out of place. Of this we have a convincing proof in Dryden’s translation of the valuable poem of Du Fresnoy, _De Arte Graphica_. The didactic parts of the poem are translated with becoming propriety; but in the midst of those practical instructions in the art of painting, how preposterous appear in prose such passages as the following?
“Those things which the poets have thought unworthy of their pens, the painters have judged to be unworthy of their pencils. For both those arts, that they might advance the sacred honours of religion, have raised themselves to heaven; and having found a free admission into the palace of Jove himself, have enjoyed the sight and conversation of the Gods, whose awful majesty they observe, and whose dictates they communicate to mankind, whom, at the same time they inspire with those celestial flames which shine so gloriously in their works.