Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/20

xiv idioms of the two languages permit, an accurate rendering of the Greek text with some elegance of expression. Howfar the execution falls short of the conception I am only too painfully conscious. To be literal and at the same time literary is a high goal to aim at; and it is to be feared that in all attempts of this kind, the amari aliquid will rise both for reader and writer. Still it will not be wholly in vain, if by means of a translation, imperfect as this will doubtless appear to many more competent to produce one than the present writer, anything is contributed to the wider study of one concerning whom a brother poet and dramatist once wrote: "a poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been something." (Quoted from Goethe by John Addington Symonds in his "Studies of the Greek Poets," 1st series, p. 242.)