But perhaps these are instances too lofty for my present purpose: I can show the same pertinacious tendency to re-solve literary problems of a far humbler kind. How striking is the fact that the task of translating certain great masterpieces of poetry seems never completed, and that in the face of scores of versions, each generation of scholars will attack afresh Homer's _Iliad_, Dante's _Divina Commedia_, Aeschylus' _Agamemnon_, and Goethe's _Faust_! There are, I believe, forty English versions of _Faust_. How many there are of the _Iliad_ and the _Divina Commedia_, I have not ascertained; but of the former there is a whole library, and of the latter we may predict with certainty that the latest version will not be the last. Not only does each generation find for itself a new ideal in translation,--the fine version of the _Iliad_ by Pope is now regarded with scorn,--but each new aspirant is discontented with the earlier renderings of the passages he himself loves best; and so year after year we see the same attempt made, often with great but never with universally accepted success. For there are always more beauties in the old masterpiece than have been conveyed, and there are always weaknesses in the translation, which show after a little wear. [Sidenote: The case of history generally.] This eternal freshness in great masterpieces of poetry which ever tempts new translators, is also to be found in great historical subjects, especially in the history of those nations which have left a permanent mark on the world's progress. There is no prospect that men will remain satisfied with the extant histories, however brilliant, of England or of France, even for an account of the periods which have long since elapsed, and upon which no new evidence of any importance can be found. Such is likewise the case with the histories of Greece and Rome. No doubt there is frequently new material discovered; the excavator may in a month's digging find stuff for years of speculation. No doubt there is an oscillation in the appreciation even of well-sifted materials: a new theory may serve to rearrange old facts and present them in a new light. But quite apart from all this, men will be found to re-handle these great histories merely for the sake of re-handling them. In the words of the very latest of these attempts: 'Though we can add nothing to the existing records of Greek history, the estimate placed upon their value and the conclusions drawn from them are constantly changing; and for this reason the story which has been told so often will be told anew from time to time so long as it continues to have an interest for mankind,--that is, let us hope, so long as mankind continues to exist.'[4:1] [Sidenote: Special claims of Greek history.]