Excerpt from Dionysius Longinus on the Sublime: Translated From the Greek With Notes and Observations, and Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of the Author

It will, without doubt, be expected, that the Reader should be made privy to the reasons upon which this Work was under taken, and is now made public. The intrinsic beauty of the piece itself first allured me to the attempt ; and a regard for the public, especially for those who might be unable to read the original, was the main inducement to its publication.

The Treatise on the Sublime had slept for several ages, covered up in the dust of libraries, till the middle of the sixteenth century. The first Latin version by Gabriel de Petra was printed at Geneva in 1612. But the first good translation of it into any modern language, was the French one of the famous Boileau, which, though not always faithful to the text, yet has an elegance and a spirit which few will ever be able to equal, much less to surpass.

The present translation was finished before I knew of any prior attempt to make Longinus speak English. The first translation of him I met with, was published by Mr. Welsted, in 1724. But I was very much surprised, upon a perusal, 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 injudiciously preserved.

I have since accidentally met with two other English versions of this Treatise; one by J.Hall, Esq. London, 1652 ; the other without a name, but printed at Oxford in 1698, and said in the title-page to have been compared with the French of Boileau. I saw nothing in either of these which did not yield the greatest encouragement to a new attempt.

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