Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/69

 without reference to that particular order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creation of a poet." The Aramaic expression for translating (targêm, from which our "dragoman" is descended) conveys the figure of "throwing a bundle over a river;" and the truth is that in the translation process the bundle never arrives at the other side exactly as it was before starting. Language, in fact, is a sound-catalogue of all the objects and thoughts familiar to the community to which it belongs, be that community ever so small or ever so large, be it an African tribe or the widespread speakers of English or Arabic, be its average senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste—as sharp, but unæsthetic, as those of an American Indian, or as æsthetically appreciative, though perhaps physically inferior, as those of the most cultured people. With the contents of this catalogue the individual makers of a group's literature must be content. Beyond it they cannot pass. To modify it to any appreciable degree they cannot hope. Their work, so far as the sound-materials they use, is one of arrangement not of creation, and, in one sense, they are the servants of the language they employ. If that language is full and melodious, such is their treasury of expression. If it is poor and rude, they can only hope to make the best use of materials which have been made for them, not by them. Even the intensely developed individualism of