What treasure hast thou brought us! and what store Still, still, dost thou arrive with at our shore, To make thy honour and our wealth the more! If all the vulgar tongues that speak this day Were asked of thy discoveries, they must say, To the Greek coast thine only knew the way. Such passage hast thou found, such returns made, As now of all men, it is called thy trade, And who make thither else, rob or invade. BEN JONSON. WHEN TRANSLATIONS ARE TO BE PREFERRED The reason the classics are not read is because there still lingers a tradition, handed down from the eighteenth century, that it is useless to read them unless in the original. A tone of sarcastic contempt is maintained towards the person who shall presume to peruse Xenophon not in the original Greek, or Virgil not in the original Latin. In the view of these critics it is the Greek, it is the Latin, that is valuable, not the contents of the volume. Shakespeare, however, the greatest genius of England, thought otherwise. It is known that his ideas of Grecian and Roman history were derived from somewhat rude translations, yet it is acknowledged that the spirit of the ancient warriors and of the ancient luxury lives in his _Antony and Cleopatra_, and nowhere in all the ancient writers is there a poem breathing the idea of Aphrodite like his _Venus and Adonis_. The example of so great a genius may shield us in an effort to free the modern mind from this eighteenth-century incubus. The truth is, the classics are much better understood in a good translation than in the original. To obtain a sufficient knowledge of Greek, for instance, to accurately translate is almost the work of a lifetime. Concentration upon this one pursuit gradually contracts the general perceptions, and it has often happened that an excellent scholar has been deficient in common knowledge, as shown by the singular character of his own notes. But his work of translation in itself is another matter. It is a treasure; from it poets derive their illustrations; dramatists their plots; painters their pictures. A young mind full of intelligence, coming to such a translation, enters at once into the spirit of the ancient writer. A good translation is thus better than the original.--R. JEFFERIES. _The Dewy Morn._ 'THAT SILLY VANITY OF IMPERTINENT CITATIONS'