In some respects it may be said that didactic poetry affords special facilities to the translator, inasmuch as it bears a more close relation to prose than verse of other descriptions. Didactic poets, such as Lucretius and Pope, are almost forced by the inexorable necessities of their subjects to think in prose. However much we may admire their verse, it is impossible not to perceive that, in dealing with subjects that require great precision of thought, they have felt themselves hampered by the necessities of metre and rhythm. They may, indeed, resort to blank verse, which is a sort of half-way house between prose and rhyme, as was done by Mr. Leonard in his excellent translation of Empedocles, of which the following specimen may be given: οὐκ ἔστιν πελάσασθαι ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἐφεκτὸν ἡμετέροις ἢ χερσὶ λαβεῖν, ᾗπερ τε μεγίστη πειθοῦς ἀνθρώποισιν ἁμαξιτὸς εἰς φρένα πίπτει. We may not bring It near us with our eyes, We may not grasp It with our human hands. With neither hands nor eyes, those highways twain, Whereby Belief drops into the minds of men. But Dr. Symmons, one of the numerous translators of Virgil, said, with some truth, that the adoption of blank verse only involves "a laborious and doubtful struggle to escape from the fangs of prose."[34] A good example of what can be done in this branch of literature is furnished by Dryden. Lucretius[35] wrote: Tu vero dubitabis et indignabere obire? Mortua cui vita est prope iam vivo atque videnti, Qui somno partem maiorem conteris aevi, Et vigilans stertis nec somnia cernere cessas Sollicitamque geris cassa formidine mentem Nec reperire potes tibi quid sit saepe mali, cum Ebrius urgeris multis miser undique curis, Atque animi incerto fluitans errore vagaris. Dryden's translation departs but slightly from the original text and at the same time presents the ideas of Lucretius in rhythmical and melodious English: And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath, Whose very life is little more than death? More than one-half by lazy sleep possest, And when awake, thy soul but nods at best, Day-dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy breast. Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind, Whose cause and case thou never hopest to find, But still uncertain, with thyself at strife, Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life. Descriptive poetry also lends itself with comparative ease to translation. Nothing can be better than the translation made by Mr. Gladstone[36] of _Iliad_ iv. 422-32. The original Greek runs thus: