Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/28

 its vigorous diction and excellent rhythm. The manner js perfectly adapted to narration, and there are few can handle a story with better delicacy and point. 'The style, if simple for its age, has all the distinction of simplicity. The cadences are a perpetual pleasure to the ear. There is a stateliness, a dignity of effect, which proves that the prose of the Authorised Version was no invention, but a growth. Though Adlington does not pretend to echo the locutions of Apuleius, he is, after his own method, a master of phrase. Girded with her beautiful skarfe of love'—is it not an exquisite idea? How more nearly or more adroitly would you turn tamen nisi capillum distinzerit than in these terms if her hair be not curiously set forth'? If only the modern translator dared to represent ementita lassitudo by 'feigned and coloured weariness,' there were hope that his craft might rise above journey-work. Who would complain that the original was embroidered when it is to such admirable purpose as: 'Thus she cried and lamented, and after she had wearied herself with sorrow and blubbered her face with teares, she closed the windows of her hollow eyes, and laid her down to sleep. Here is prose, ever vivid and alert, ever absolved from the suspicion of the stereotyped phrase. In Adlington's day 'good taste' had not banned freshness and eccentricity from the language. A century later it had been impossible to translate glebosa camporum into ' cloggy, fallowed fields'; yet this is Adlington's expression, and it may be matched or bettered on every His Sustained page. Above all, his work is distinguished by that nobility of rhythm which makes the Tudor prose the best of good reading. 'And while I considered these things, I