But in Poetry. Ay, there the difficulties grow--there all are collected--and one equal to all, or nearly so, is added--VERSE! Of all writers, the poet is the most exquisite in his words. His creations revolve in them--live in them--breathe and burn. Shakspeare expresses this--"the poet's _pen_ turns them to shape." Ariel, and Lear, and Hamlet, are not except in the very words--their very own words. For the poet, of all men, feels most susceptibly, sensitively, perceptively, acutely, accurately, clearly, tenderly, kindly--the contact of his mind with yours; and the words are the _medium of contact_! Yet, most of the ILIAD may be transferred--for it is a history. The manners are easily depicted in a Translation--so is the wonderful thinking that remains to us therein from that remote lost world--and makes the substratum of the poem. In short, that old world which Homer preserves, can be shown in a Translation, but _not Homer himself_. The simplicity, and sweetness, and majesty, and the musical soul and art, require Greek, and old Greek. A translation into Attic Greek by Sophocles, would not be Homer. Into modern English? Alas, and alack-a-day! An English translator might better undertake Euripides than Sophocles, and Sophocles than AEschylus. AEschylus, Pindar, Homer--these are the three terrors of Translation. Why? They are doubly so remote! Distant so far, and distant so high! We should not, ourselves, much care for undertaking Apollonius Rhodius, and Callimachus, although the Alexandrian schoolmaster abounds in the poetical riches of the Greek tongue, and the Cyrenaic hymnist has an unattainable spirit of grace and elastic step. Yet we could, with a safe conscience, try; because if less glory be attempted by the translator, less can be lost for his original. Whereas, if we let down Homer, Pindar, AEschylus, we are lowering the heights of the human spirit--_crimen laesoe majestatis_. In poetry the absolutely creative power of the human spirit--that immense endowment and privilege of the human being--is at its height. Many view this endowment and privilege with scepticism--renouncing their own glory--denying themselves. Therefore, it is always important, in civilized times, that the majesty and might of poetry be sustained--surrounded by a body-guard of opinion. In rude times it can take good care of itself. Then the king walks among the people safe in their faith and love. Now you tremble to diminish the reverence of that creation. But courage! All cannot read Greek, and they are, as fellow men of Homer, entitled to as much of him as they can get. Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, all taken together, impress an Englishman (Scotsman included) who is no Grecian, with a belief in greatness. And then for the perpetual feeding of his faith he has his own Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton.