In this article, Dryden refers to his translation activities as “the disease of translation.” He summarizes the translator’s qualifications in the following manner: “the qualification of a translator worth reading must be a mastery of the language he translates out of, and that he translates into; but if a deficiency be to be allowed in either, it is in the original, since if he be but master enough of the tongue of his author as to be master of his sense, it is possible for him to express that sense with eloquence in his own, if he have a thorough command of that.”