Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/20

 xx the effect of the sentence by introducing ' it.' Collective nouns in Greek and English create a similar but lesser awkwardness.

(4). The use of relation is far more extended in Greek than in E^nglish. Partly the greater variety of genders and cases makes the connexion of relative and antece- dent less ambiguous : partly also the greater number of demonstrative and relative pronouns, and the use of the article, make the correlation of ideas simpler and more natural. The Greek appears to have had an ear or intelligence for a long and complicated sentence which is rarely to be found in modern nations ; and in order to bring the Greek down to the level of the modern, we must break up the long sentence into two or more short ones. Neither is the same precision required in Greek as in Latin or English, nor in earlier Greek as in later; there was nothing shocking to the contemporary of Thucydides and Plato in anacolutha and repetitions. In such cases the genius of the English language requires that the translation should be more intelligible than the Greek. The want of more distinctions between the de- monstrative pronouns is also greatly felt. Two genitives dependent on one another, unless familiarised by idiom, have an awkward effect in English. Frequently the noun has to take the place of the pronoun. ' This ' and ' that ' are found repeating themselves to weariness in the rough draft of a translation. As in the previous case, while the feeling of the modern language is more opposed to tau- tology, there is also a greater difficulty in avoiding it.

(5). Though no precise rule can be laid down about the repetition of words, there seems to be a kind of im- pertinence in presenting to the reader the same thought in the same words, repeated twice over in the same