that takes from dignity; and strangeness, or uncouthness, including
harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they
cannot be given but by languid circumlocutions, cannot in fact be
said to be given at all.... I feel it, however, to be too probable
that my translation is deficient in ornament, because I must
unavoidably have lost many of Virgil's, and have never without
reluctance attempted a compensation of my own."

The truth of this last self-criticism is very apparent from
the fragments of the translation which were published in the
_Philological Museum_; and Coleridge, to whom the whole manuscript
was submitted, justly complains of finding "page after page without
a single brilliant note;" and adds, "Finally, my conviction is that
you undertake an impossibility, and that there is no medium between a
pure version and one on the avowed principle of _compensation_ in
the widest sense, i.e. manner, genius, total effect; I confine
myself to _Virgil_ when I say this." And it appears that Wordsworth
himself came round to this view, for in reluctantly sending a
specimen of his work to the _Philological Museum_ in 1832, he says,--

"Having been displeased in modern translations with the
additions of incongruous matter, I began to translate with a
resolve to keep clear of that fault by adding nothing; but I
became convinced that a spirited translation can scarcely be
accomplished in the English language without admitting a
principle of compensation."

There is a curious analogy between the experiences of Cowper and
Wordsworth in the way of translation. Wordsworth's translation of
Virgil was prompted by the same kind of reaction against the