"
"Johnson's translation of this," said Wordsworth, "is extremely bad:
"'Let Observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
"And I do not know that Gifford's is at all better:
"'In every clime, from Ganges' distant stream,
To Gades, gilded by the western beam,
Few, from the clouds of mental error free,
In its true light, or good or evil see.'
"But", he added, musing, "what is Dryden's? Ha! I have it:
"'_Look round the habitable world_, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue.'
"This is indeed the language of a poet; it is better than the original."
The great majority of your readers will without doubt, consider this
compliment to Dryden well and justly bestowed, and his version, besides
having the merit of classical expression, to be at once concise and
poetical. And pity it is that one who could form so true an estimate of
the excellences of other writers, and whose own powers, it will be
acknowledged, were of a very high order, should so often have given us
reason to regret his puerilities and absurdities.
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