This, however, although happy, starts a different view of the subject. It
suggests the idea that most translations are metamorphoses to the worse,
like that of a living person into a dead tree, or at least of a superior
into an inferior being. In Pope's "Iliad," you have the metamorphosis of
an eagle into a nightingale; in Dryden's "Virgil," you have a stately
war-horse transformed into a hard-trotting hackney; in Hoole's versions
of the Italian Poets, you have nymphs nailed up in timber; while, on the
other hand, in Coleridge's "Wallenstein," you have the "nobler change,"
spoken of by Addison, of--shall we say?-a cold and stately holly-tree
turned into a murmuring and oracular oak.

That, after thus introducing himself to Dryden, he met him occasionally
seems certain, although the rumour circulated by Spence that he taught
the old man to sit late and drink hard seems ridiculous. Dryden
introduced him to Congreve, and through Congreve he made the valuable
acquaintance of Charles Montague, then leader of the Whigs in the House
of Commons, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He afterwards published a translation of that part of the "Fourth Book
of the Georgics" referring to bees, on which Dryden, who had procured a
preface to his own complete translation of the same poem from Addison,
complimented him by saying--"After his bees, my later swarm is scarcely
worth hiving." He published, too, a poem on "King William," and an
"Account of the Principal English Poets," in which he ventures on a
character of Spenser ere he had read his works. It thus is, as might have
been expected, poor and non-appreciative, and speaks of Spenser as a poet
pretty nearly forgotten. Some time after this, he collected a volume,
entitled, "Musæ Anglicanæ," in which he inserted all his early Latin
verses.