Page:From the Garden of Hellas.djvu/22

xvi be deemed the most poetic. In this way one misses the infinite variety of the Anthology, its representative quality, its contrasting notes of personality, its kaleidoscopic harmony of local color.

This small book is an attempt at a selection that shall be fairly representative of all the many classes of poems, except those that, for obvious reasons, are untranslatable, and in every case the translator has aimed at literal fidelity to the original. To have imitated the Greek metres would have been a rash experiment in English, and even if successful would have been monotonous. It has therefore been deemed advisable to use, instead of metres familiar to the ancients, those familiar to ourselves.