Pagina 29 [29]
OCR
xxii Introduction have scarcely discourag’d me from pursuing the undertaking: For to have adventured abroad a second Edition of this antiquated Version, would doubtless have been interpreted as a design rather of exercising the Reader in the unpleasant task of laboriously picking out the meaning of obsolete words, and expressions, than of fairly leading him into the true and genuine sense of the Original; although what is here asserted might be easily made out beyond all possibility of exception, yet the learned Author acquitted himself so very well herein, that he comes fully up even to the most commendable way of writing, which obtain’d in his time.’ The translation now reprinted was made in 1668 by John Wilson (1627 ?-1696), scholar, lawyer, and writer of plays. He was well known for his ultra-royalist views, which gained him favour with the Duke of York and a post in Ireland, but better known for his comedies, “The Cheats’ ‘and “The Projectors’; where rascality is happily described. His version is more direct and restrained than ‘Witt against Wisdom’; or as Kennett himself puts it, ‘ The modern Translator (Wilson)... tied himself...
