There seems to be a tendency to overestimate the disparity between translations of high poetry and the originals. The value of a translation depends primarily upon the character of the thing translated, since it is the form that is unreproducible in another tongue, and not the substance. In epic and dramatic poetry where the form is of secondary importance, a good literal translation may come much nearer to the original than a translation of a lyric where the form is usually of at least equal importance with the substance. We lose less of Homer or Sophocles than of Sappho or Theocritus in translation. In the case of epic poetry the higher its character, the closer to the original appears the translation, because the form is of less relative importance. More of Dante is lost than of Homer in literal translation, but the difference narrows when the new versions are in metrical form, for the use of metre in translation is necessarily more detrimental as the substance of the original increases in power, and this relative weakening is emphasized as the beauty of form in the translation is raised. Pope is farther from Homer than Chapman, and Chapman than the prose translations of Buckley and Lang. As we descend in the scale of the art, so it becomes more difficult to reproduce the poet in translation, and in most lyric poetry the beauty seems almost entirely lost in another tongue from the original, though when the substance is of weight, and the translator is himself a good poet, he sometimes gives us a paraphrase with a high beauty of its own. Some modern poets seem to eschew substance altogether. Much of the verse of esteemed French and Belgian poets is quite meaningless in literal translation, the authors relying for the effects entirely upon musical form and beauty of expression. NOTE 22. PAGE 66 Lessing points out this remarkable picture of Homer as emphasizing the beauty of Helen, observing: What could produce a more vivid idea of beauty than making old age confess that it is well worth while the war which cost so much blood, and so much treasure?