Book I

of Ovid's _Ars Amoris_.

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English translators of the classics abounded, including Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman and Sandys; Roscommon, Waller, Denham, Cowley and Dryden. By 1700, the major kinds of translation had been differentiated, described, evaluated and practised.

To summarize, Dryden wrote as follows in his Preface to the 1680 edition of _Ovid's Epistles_, Translated by Several Hands:

All translation I suppose may be reduced to these three heads:

First, that of Metaphrase, or turning an Author word by word, and line by line, from one language to another.... The second way is that of Paraphrase, or Translation with Latitude, where the Author is kept in view by the Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly follow'd as his sense, and that too is admitted to be amplyfied, but not alter'd.... The Third way is that of Imitation, where the Translator (if now [i.e. by taking such liberties] he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion: and taking only some general hints from the Original, to run division on the ground-work, as he pleases....

Doubtless, he refers to the translation of verse into verse, but actually verse-into-prose also falls within Dryden's "third way." When the author of the Preface to _The Lover's Assistant_ speaks of it as an "undertaking" in translation, he means prose imitation, or paraphrase of verse.

Earlier, in the 1743 _Miscellanies_, Fielding had published "Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire Modernized in Burlesque [i.e. Hudibrastic] Verse." The modernization, as in his _Art of Love_, was of place (England instead of Italy) as well as time, and allowed the author to satirize some of his contemporaries, as well as the customs of his own age.

When, four years later, he turned to the first book of Ovid's _Artis Amatoriae_, he found prose an even better medium for "Imitation," or "Modernization." The result is a most enjoyable _pot pourri_ of Roman mythology and eighteenth century social customs, combined with some of the patriotism left over from Fielding's anti-Jacobinism during the Forty-Five. His devotion to, and constant use of, the classics has excited comment from every Fielding biographer since his own time. His works abound in classical instances, references and imitations; and most of his writing includes translations from Greek or Roman authors. His library, as Austin Dobson observed, was rich in editions of the classics.

Curiously, the sale catalogue lists only one, unidentifiable, Ovid item, as contrasted with 5 editions of Horace, 9 of Lucian and 13 (between 1504 and 1629) of Aristotle. This probably means that, along with other unlisted works known to have been in his possession, his Ovid was retained by his family or given to a friend. Dryden's translation of