At least, says again the lover of current things, you must write in the language of the hour. Some beauty is lost when the poet does not speak in his native tongue, or when we cannot read him in it. Well, some languages are better than others; Greek was a better language, more precise, more varied, more forceful and more colorful, than English or any of the modern tongues. But all language changes, as the works of art in language do not; in literature we have this haunting paradox, that through a temporary medium we can build something imperishable. Much as we may dislike literature in translation, it is perhaps salutary to remember that literary masterpieces must survive in translation or not at all. In what language were the parables spoken? If Homer were not Homer still in English or French or German, how much of Homer would the world know? Some bouquet of his own time is gone, but perhaps we should not have liked it if it had remained. At least we have kept what we liked; we have kept what suited our spiritual needs, we have loved Andromache and Hector, and wondered in the old way why such fine men as Achilles and Agamemnon should quarrel, and have decided, as all our fathers have done, that for so beautiful a woman as Helen to waste her time on so mean a fellow as Paris, there must have been queer influences at work. To live in art in this timeless way, is to satisfy what is eternal in ourselves; it is to leave behind us the limitations of our hour, our place, and our language. And unless art is wide enough for us to live in it so, we shall trifle with it only for an hour, and without regret let it go the way of other contemporary things. V THE CHARACTERS PROPER TO LITERATURE I