The attention paid by the ancients to what may be termed tricks of style has probably in some degree enhanced the difficulties of prose translation. It may not always be easy in a foreign language to reproduce the subtle linguistic shades of Demosthenic oratory--the Anaphora (repetition of the same word at the beginning of co-ordinate sentences following one another), the Anastrophe (the final word of a sentence repeated at the beginning of one immediately following), the Polysyndeton (the same conjunction repeated), or the Epidiorthosis (the correction of an expression). Nevertheless, in dealing with a prose composition, the weight of the arguments, the lucidity with which the facts are set forth, and the force with which the conclusions are driven home, rank, or should rank, in the mind of the reader higher than any feelings which are derived from the music of the words or the skilful order in which they are arranged. Moreover, in prose more frequently than in verse, it is the beauty of the idea expressed which attracts rather than the language in which it is clothed. Thus, for instance, there can be no difficulty in translating the celebrated metaphor of Pericles[28] that "the loss of the youth of the city was as if the spring was taken out of the year," because the beauty of the idea can in no way suffer by presenting it in English, French, or German rather than in the original Greek. Again, to quote another instance from Latin, the fine epitaph to St. Ovinus in Ely Cathedral: "Lucem tuam Ovino da, Deus, et requiem," loses nothing of its terse pathos by being rendered into English. Occasionally, indeed, the truth is forced upon us that even in prose "a thing may be well said once but cannot be well said twice" (τὸ καλῶς εἰπεῖν ἅπαξ περιγίγνεται, δὶς δὲ οὐκ ἐνδέχεται), but this is generally because the genius of one language lends itself with special ease to some singularly felicitous and often epigrammatic form of expression which is almost or sometimes even quite untranslatable. Who, for instance, would dare to translate into English the following description which the Duchesse de Dino[29] gave of a lady of her acquaintance: "Elle n'a jamais été jolie, mais elle était blanche et fraîche, _avec quelques jolis détails"_? On the whole, however, it may be said that if the prose translator is thoroughly well acquainted with both of the languages which he has to handle, he ought to be able to pay adequate homage to the genius of the one without offering undue violence to that of the other.