The respectable and sometimes excellent translations of Bohn's Library have done for literature what railroads have done for internal intercourse. I do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, and all good books, in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable,--any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into phrases of equal melody. The Italians have a fling at translators,--_i traditori traduttori_; but I thank them. I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother-tongue.--R. W. EMERSON. _Books._ ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. J. KEATS. TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CLASSICS Others again here livèd in my days That have of us deservèd no less praise For their translations than the daintiest wit That on Parnassus thinks he highest doth sit. And for a chair may 'mongst the Muses call As the most curious maker of them all: As reverent Chapman, who hath brought to us Musaeus, Homer, and Herodotus Out of the Greek, and by his skill hath reared Them to that height and to our tongue endeared That, were those poets at this day alive To see their books thus with us to survive, They would think, having neglected them so long, They had been written in the English tongue. M. DRAYTON. _To Henry Reynolds._ It is good to have translations, because they serve as a comment, so far as the judgement of one man goes.--J. SELDEN. TO MY WORTHY AND HONOURED FRIEND MASTER GEORGE CHAPMAN Whose work could this be, Chapman, to refine Old Hesiod's ore, and give it thus! but thine, Who hadst before wrought in rich Homer's mine.