pitch; partly, because, there being no question that the lyric metre of the tragedians exhibits the full power of their language, the translator is not doing justice to the work who does not endeavour, as far as may be, to bring out the full power of his. The fact of the matter is, the translator's art is always more or less of the nature of a compromise. If the indulgence of a luxuriant freedom is apt to trench on accuracy, the observance of a strict verbal accuracy is ill compatible with that grace and elasticity of movement without which poetry has no existence. In the present translation, I have been willing to try several styles, if not to suit the humour of different readers, (which, however, were anything but an illegitimate object), at least to satisfy myself what could be done. I shall now say a word on the principles which I have adopted with regard to the representation of the various Greek metres by {6} corresponding varieties of English verse. I say _corresponding_ or _analogous_ emphatically; for, whatever apish tricks the Germans may have taught their pliant tongue to play, the conservative English ear, "peculiarly intolerant of metrical innovations,"[f4] will not allow itself to be seduced--whether by the arguments of Southey, or the example of Longfellow--from the familiar harmonies of our old Saxon measures. Nor, indeed, is this stiffness of native metrical habit, a circumstance at all to be regretted. Every language has its own measures, which are natural and easy to it, as every man has his own way of walking, which he cannot forego for another, without affectation. I do not think Goethe's Reineke Fuchs a whit the better, but rather the worse, for being written in the measure of the Odyssey; and the artificial choral versification of Humboldt, Franz, Schoemann, and Müller, in their translations from Æschylus, is, to my ear, mere metrical monstrosity, which would read much better if it were broken down into plain prose.[f5] I have, therefore, not attempted anything of this kind in my translation, except accidentally; that is to say, when the Greek measure happened to be at the same time an English measure, as in the case of the Trochaic Tetrameter, of which the reader will find examples in the conclusion of the AGAMEMNON, and in various parts of the PERSIANS. This measure, as Aristotle informs us,[f6] is a remnant of the old energetic triple time to which the sportive Bacchic chorus originally danced; and, as it seems to be used by the tragedians in passages where peculiar energy or elevation is intended,[f7] I do not think the translator is at liberty to confound it in his version with the common dialogue. With regard to the Iambic dialogue itself, there can be no question that our heroic blank verse of ten syllables, both in point of character and compass, is the natural and adequate representative of the Greek trimeter of twelve.[f8] The Anapæstic verse occasions more difficulty. The {7}