Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/168

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148
LIFE OF EDMOND MALONE.

as the difference of idiom will permit, copying his phrase; a mode of translating hostile to elegance but friendly to fidelity. I would at all times rather choose to be faithful than elegant. Above all things, the characteristics of the original should be preserved, which in the case before us has a certain simplicity or naiveté, and this I have endeavoured to copy, though in so doing I may very probably have rendered my language so faulty as to require much correction.”

The second adverts to the paucity of corrections in the piece so transmitted, which he attributes to Malone’s delicacy. He asks, as usual, for further supplies of books:—Dante, in large paper; some of the Delphine Classics; Gatt’s Travels; Ford’s Plays, “to which I am very partial;” and some others. He glances also at the trial of the then great Indian delinquent—“As a man, and for the sake of human nature, I am happy that Hastings has been so ably attacked. As a friend, I am delighted at Burke’s success. When next you see him, tell him so from me. It is, I think, impossible that even partiality can screen the tyrant of the East from punishment; and the disgrace will be greater in proportion to that partiality.”

All writers who have spoken of Dr. Warburton’s career have usually dwelt upon his good fortune in meeting with Pope. But by the following account, the latter would appear to have been the greater gainer of the two by the intimacy. The Poet made the Divine a Bishop, and the Divine made the Poet a Christian.