ation, and to inquire how some master
in the particular language has presented the case without reference to
the utterances of his predecessors in other languages. A good example of
this process may be found in comparing the language in which others have
treated Vauvenargues' well-known saying: "Pour executer de grandes
choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir."
Bacchylides[37] put the same idea in the following words:

[Greek: thnaton eunta chre didymous aexein
gnomas, hoti t' aurion opseai
mounon haliou phaos,
choti pentekont' etea
zoan bathyplouton teleis.][38]

And the great Arab poet Abu'l'Ala, whose verse has been admirably
translated by Mr. Baerlein, wrote:

If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.

Another instance of the same kind, which may be cited without in any way
wishing to advance what Professor Courthope[39] very justly calls "the
mean charge of plagiarism," is Tennyson's line, "His honour rooted in
dishonour stood." Euripides[40] expressed the same idea in the following
words:

[Greek: ek ton gar aischron esthla mechanometha.]

To cite another case, the following lines of _Paradise Lost_ may be
compared with the treatment accorded by Euripides to the same subject:

Oh, why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With men as Angels, without feminine;
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind?

Euripides wrote:

[Greek: o Zeu, ti de kibdelon anthropois kakon,
gynaikas es phos heliou katokisas?
ei gar broteion etheles speirai genos,
ouk ek gynaikon chren paraschesthai tode.][41]

Apart, however, from the process to which allusion is made above, very
many instances may, of course, be cited, of translations properly so
called which have reproduced not merely the exact sense but the vigour
of the original idea in a foreign language with little or no resort to
paraphrase. What can be better than Cowley's translation of Claudian's
lines?--

Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum
Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus.

A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees,