Nowadays, the Dutch expect their translators to aim at equivalence between translation and original. They know that this is idealistic and that the pursuit of equivalence is doomed to failure due to the differences between languages and cultures and the complex role of interpretation in the process of reading and translation. But this approach, most familiar to the twentieth century, was only one of the legitimate options at the time (1750 – 1820). In such a context, where a translator has much freedom in determining his or her own approach to an original, the interpretative role of the translator is crucial. It is likely that his or her opinion of the original plays a decisive role in the process of translation. One element in such a complex phenomenon as “opinion of the original” is the attitude of the translator towards the national character, in this case the English nature of the original. The author investigates what translators say about their attitude towards the “Englishness” of their originals and about how they intend to deal with it in their translations.