--his freedom, grace,
simplicity, stateliness, weight, precision; or the best part of him will
be lost to the English reader. It should read as an original work, and
should also be the most faithful transcript which can be made of the
language from which the translation is taken, consistently with the
first requirement of all, that it be English. Further, the translation
being English, it should also be perfectly intelligible in itself
without reference to the Greek, the English being really the more lucid
and exact of the two languages. In some respects it may be maintained
that ordinary English writing, such as the newspaper article, is
superior to Plato: at any rate it is couched in language which is very
rarely obscure. On the other hand, the greatest writers of Greece,
Thucydides, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, are
generally those which are found to be most difficult and to diverge most
widely from the English idiom. The translator will often have to convert
the more abstract Greek into the more concrete English, or vice versa,
and he ought not to force upon one language the character of another.
In some cases, where the order is confused, the expression feeble, the
emphasis misplaced, or the sense somewhat faulty, he will not strive in
his rendering to reproduce these characteristics, but will re-write the
passage as his author would have written it at first, had he not been
'nodding'; and he will not hesitate to supply anything which, owing to
the genius of the language or some accident of composition, is
omitted in the Greek, but is necessary to make the English clear and
consecutive.

It is difficult to harmonize all these conflicting elements. In a
translation of Plato what may be termed the interests of the Greek
and English are often at war with one another. In framing the English
sentence we are insensibly diverted from the exact meaning of the Greek;
when we return to the Greek we are apt to cramp and overlay the English.
We substitute, we compromise, we give and take, we add a little here
and leave out a little there. The translator may sometimes be allowed to
sacrifice minute accuracy for the sake of clearness and sense. But he is
not therefore at liberty to omit words and turns of expression which the
English language is quite capable of supplying. He must be patient and
self-controlled; he must not be easily run away with. Let him never
allow the attraction of a favourite expression,