To treat the question more argumentatively, let Prose Composition be divided into History, Philosophy, Oratory. In History, Translation--say into English--is easiest, and in all cases practicable. The information transferred is the chief thing asked, even if Style be lost--with some writers a small, with others no doubt a considerable, with a few a great loss. But the facts, that is, the events, and all the characters too, can be turned over, although one finer historical fact--the spirit of the country and time, as breathing in the very Style of the artist, may, yet need not, evaporate. The Translator, however, should be himself an historian or antiquary, and should confine himself--as, indeed, if left to himself he will do--to the nation in whose fate he happens to have had awakened in him--by influences hard to tell, and perhaps to himself unknown--the perpetual interest of a sympathy that endears to him, above all others, that especial region, and the ages that like shadows have passed over it. In Philosophy, the Translator's task is harder, and it is higher; but its accomplishment is open to the zealous lover of truth. The whole philosophy must be thoroughly possessed by him, or meanings will be lost from, or imposed on, the author--cases fatal both. Besides, of all writers, a philosopher most collects extensive and penetrating theories into chosen words. No dictionary--the soul only of the philosopher interprets these words. In the new language, you must have great power and mastery to seize equivalents if there; if not, to create them, or to extricate yourself with circumlocutions that do not bewilder or mislead--precise and exquisite. Have we, in our language, many, any such Translations? Not Taylor's or Sydenham's Plato--not Gillies's Aristotle. Coleridge is dead--but De Quincey is alive. In Oratory, the Style is all in all. It is the _ipsissimus homo_. He who "wielded at will that fierce democratic," does not appear unless the thunder growl and the lightning dazzle. From what hand shall it fulmine over England as over Greece? Yet the matter, the facts, the order, the logic, are all easily enough to be transferred--not the passion and the splendour, except by an orator, and even hardly by him; but Brougham has grappled manfully with Demosthenes, though he hath somewhat diminished the power of the Crown.