PREFACE. Twill, without doubt, be expected, that the reader should be made privy to the reafons, upon which this work was undertaken, and is now made public. The intrinfic beauty of the piece itself first allured me to the attempt; and a regard for the public, efpecially for those who might be unable to read the original, was the main inducement to its publication. The Treatife on the SUBLIME had flept for feveral ages, covered up in the dust of libraries, till the middle of the fixteenth century. The first Latin verfion by Gabriel de Petra was printed at Geneva in 1612. But the first good tranflation of it into any modern language was the French one of the famous Boileau, which, tho' not always faithful to the text, yet has an elegance and a fpirit, which few will ever be able to equal, much less to furpass, The prefent tranflation was finished, before I knew of any prior attempt to make Longinus Speak English. The first tranflation of him I met with, was publish'd by Mr. Welfted in 1724. But I was very much furprised, upon a perufal, to to find it only Boileau's translation misrepresented, and mangled. For every beauty is impaired, if not totally effaced, and every error (even down to those of the printer) most injuriously preserved. I have fince accidentally met with two other English verfions of this Treatife; one by J. Hall Efq; London 1652; the other without a name, but printed at Oxford in 1698, and faid in the title-page to have been compared with the French of Boileau. I faw nothing in either of these, which did not yield the greatest encouragement to a new attempt. No less than nine years have intervened fince the finishing of this tranflation, in which Space it has been frequently revifed, fubmitted to the cenfure of friends, and amended again and again by a more attentive study of the original. The defign was, if poffible, to make it read like an original: whether I have fucceeded in this, the bulk of my readers may judge; but whether the tranflation be good, or come any thing near to the life, the spirit, the energy of Longinus, is a decifion peculiar to men of learning and taste, who alone know the difficulties which attend fuch an undertaking, and will be impartial enough to give the Tranflator the necessary indulgence. Longinus bimfelf was never accurately enough published, nor thoroughly understood, till Dr. * Dr. Pearce did him juftice in his late editions at London. My thanks are due to that gentleman, not only for his correct editions on account of which the whole learned world is indebted to him; but for thofe animadverfions and corrections of this tranflation, with which he fo kindly favoured me. Most of the remarks and obfervations were drawn up, before I had read his Latin notes. I am not the least in pain, about the pertinency of thofe inftances which I have brought from the facred writers, as well as from fome of the finest of our own country, to illuftrate the criticisms of Longinus. I am only fearful, left among the multiplicity of fuch as might be bad, I may be thought to have omitted fome of the beft. I am fenfible, that what I have done, might be done much better; but if I have the good fortune to contribute a little, towards the fixing a true judicious tafte, and enabling my readers to diftinguish fenfe from found, grandeur from pomp, and the Sublime from fuftian and bombast, I shall think my time well spent; and shall be ready to Submit to the cenfures of a judge, but shall only Smile at the fnarling of what is commonly called a critic. *Now Lord Bishop of Bangor. IN D E X Of the SECTIONS in Longinus. SECT. I. HAT Cecilius's treatise on the Sublime is im- Tperfect, and why. SECT. II. Whether the Sublime may be learned. Of Bombaft. Of Puerilities. SECT. III. Page 1 5 8 12 13 14 18 Of the Parenthyrfe, or ill-timed emotion. SECT. VI. Whence these imperfections take their rife. That a knowledge of the true Sublime is attainable. 19 That the definition, which the writers of rhetoric give 63 SECT. |