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There is a curious analogy between the experiences of Cowper and Wordsworth in the way of translation. Wordsworth's translation of Virgil was prompted by the same kind of reaction against the reckless laxity of Dryden as that which inspired Cowper against the distorting artificiality of Pope.
Not because of the force in the vise-like fingers, not because of the dominating mind that controlled them, but because of the generous spirit that treats a conquered enemy even a dog as an honorable antagonist, not an abject slave. There had seemed to be a sudden comprehension on the part of the dog, like the clearing of a distorting mist.
If that were the case, then I would gladly confess the error of my doubts, and take the pretended larger amount of happiness for a guarantee of the future of the commonwealth. But, ladies and gentlemen! a single word the manner in which we use it, distorting its original meaning, often characterizes a whole century.
But these changes came about a little later, and at a time when his attention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of Smoke and the collie, that he only observed them, as it were, subconsciously. And the excitement, the flickering candlelight, the distress he felt for the collie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog were the poorest possible allies to careful observation.
Exiles are proverbially credulous, and it is likely enough that the gossip of the English refugees at the Hague was much employed in improving or inventing stories about the man, who had dared to answer the royalist champion in Latin as good as his own. Salmasius in his Defensio had employed these stories, distorting the events of Milton's life to discredit him.
Gone were the stooping shoulders, gone the hollow cheeks, the thin, extended lips, the widened nostrils, as the little distorting pieces of wax were removed; and out of the metamorphosis, hard and grim, set like chiselled marble, was revealed the face of Jimmie Dale.
And I want you to think seriously over all you said this afternoon about not cramping or distorting your individuality to suit my 'prejudices. If you feel that your art must come before everything, that marriage will only hamper its full development, without making good what you lose, in fact, if you think that the purely artist life will be better and happier for you in the long-run, I would sooner you said so frankly, I would indeed."
If you are to make these or any other creatures act differently, you must give them a different nature. By distorting the tree, or training the animal, or clipping the wings of the bird, you may make some trifling and temporary alteration in the condition or conduct of these creatures; but when you have done this, left to themselves, they will soon revert to their original nature.
Puritanic and academic taboo of sex in education and religion is as disastrous to human welfare as prostitution or the venereal scourges. "We are compelled squarely to face the distorting influences of biologically aborted reformers as well as the wastefulness of seducers," Dr. Edward A. Kempf recently declared.
The surrender of ever greater and greater hostages to expediency, the retreat to ever meaner and meaner instruments of activity, the gradual induration of heart and soul, the desperate and ever more desperate search for self-deceiving extenuations, for self-blinding condonement, for pitiful and distorting self-propitiation in these lay the inward corruption, more implacably and more terribly tragic than any outward blow!
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