Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/14

x deprive his work of that air of spontaneity and freedom without which it is not a reproduction, but a caricature. Anything of the nature of bondage to the letter, anything that thrusts on the reader the reflection, "This is a translation; for our writers don't set forth their own thoughts in this style," is so far a departure from a true presentment of an author whose countrymen never found in his diction anything cramped or foreign. And, per contra, whatever contributes to produce in the reader the illusion that he has before him an original work, is so far a step in the direction of justice to his author. Now rhyme possesses a great initial advantage, in that rhymeless lyrical measures excite in the English reader a sense of the unusual and the disappointing, as though the writer were niggard of the wealth of his own language, were content to forego half of the magic of sound—that echo-music which charmed the ears of the people when scholars looked askance at it, and which scholars have long since forgotten to call barbarous. But the Greek no more suspected a great dramatist of neglecting any means whereby he might satisfy his hearers' demand, not only for noble thought, but for musical expression, than of begrudging them aught of his treasures of experience and imagination. In both directions he felt that the poet had taxed to the uttermost all the resources of melody, as of thought, at his command; and, without a similar impression, the modern reader will hardly enjoy a similar satisfaction. Moreover, there is in the structural basis of the group of languages to which English belongs something comparatively harsh and unmusical, rendering them far inferior in rhythmical possibilities to Greek; hence, no conceivable perfection of metrical execution could give that satisfaction to the ear which was given by the Greek measures: the instinct, therefore, of northern poets led them long ago to provide a compensating satisfaction in the accessory of rhyme, like the rustic host who