WHEN SHALL WE TRANSLATE?—There is nothing particularly “masterly” from the modern English point of view in Hobbes’s translation of Pericles’s _Funeral Oration_. His period of English prose appears to have been ill-adapted for the translation of the Greek idiom of the time of Pericles. To the usual cautions against translations in general, we ought to add the caution against translations made in dissimilar epochs. It is not at any time in the history of a language that a translation from a foreign language can safely be undertaken. In all probability, indeed, the proper period for translation is no longer in point of time than the period within which the original itself was written. If the Periclean Age lasted, let us say, fifty years, it is within a period in English history of the same length that an adequate translation can be made. Once let that period go by, and a perfect translation will be for ever impossible. And equally the result will be a failure, if the translation is attempted before its time has come. I do not think that the Hobbesian period of English was in key with the period of Periclean Greek; nor, again, do I think that our period for perfect translation has yet come. A “masterpiece” of translation of Pericles’s _Oration_ is still, in my opinion, to be done. But I am confident that we are approaching the proper period, and in proof of this I would remark on the superiority of Jowett’s translation over that of Hobbes. Jowett, as a writer of original English, nobody, I think, would compare with Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes was a great pioneer, a creator of language; Jowett was only a good writer. Nevertheless, the idiom in which Jowett wrote, was more nearly perfect (that is, fully developed) English than the idiom in which Hobbes wrote. And since, in point of development, the correspondence between Periclean Greek and Jowett’s English is closer than the correspondence between Periclean Greek and Hobbes’s English, Jowett’s translation is nearer the original than Hobbes’s.