A Lift and a Shove

James Mangan (1803-1849), "A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum," The Prose Writings of James Clarence Mangan, ed. D. J.  O'Donoghue (Dublin: O'Donoghue & Co., 1904), p. 224:

A translator from Spanish, French, High Dutch, &c. should always improve on his original if he can. Most continental writers are dull plodders, and require spurring and furbishing. I see no harm in now and then giving them a lift and a shove. If I receive two or three dozen of sherry for a dinner-party, and by some chemical process can convert the sherry into champagne, my friends are all the merrier, and nobody is a loser.