Alexander Fraser Tytler

"We may certainly, from the foregoing observations, conclude, that is impossible to do complete justice to any species of poetical compositin in a prose translation; in other words, that none but a poe…"

"Works which consist of fact and detail demand a more scrupulous fidelity than those of which the basis is sentiment."

"... a translator may discern the general character of his author's style, and yet fail remarkably in the imitation of it. Unless he is possessed of the most correct taste, he will be in continual dang…"

"If the order in which I have classed the three general laws of translation be their just and natural arrangement, which I think will hardly be denied, it will follow, that in all cases where a sacrifi…"

"It is always a fault when the translator adds to the sentiment of the original author, what does not strictly accord with his characteristic mode of thinking, or expressing himself."

"In Latin two negatives make an affirmative; but it is otherwise in Greek, they only give force to the negation ..."

"The familiar style of epistolary correspondence is rarely attainable even in original composition. It consists in a delicate medium between the perfect freedom of ordinary conversation and the regular…"

"But if authors, even of taste and genius, be found at times to have made an injudicious use of that liberty which is allowed in the translation of poetry, we must expect to see it miserably abused ind…"