Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/15

Rh trusts that his wine may recommend his coarser fare to palates accustomed to delicate viands. Hence it becomes a serious question for the conscientious translator, whether, by discarding one element of the charm of English lyrical poetry, he has not imposed upon himself the obligation of filling the void with the inadequate materials left to him, of achieving a consummate excellence of workmanship, the difficulty of which is indicated by the rarity in English literature even of attempts in this direction.

There are three classes of readers whom a translator may have in view—the general reader, for whom the perfect translation is that which does not suggest an original, and whom it is therefore hard to satisfy;—the scholar, to whom the original is a joy, and (when improved by his own emendations) a pride, and whom it is impossible to satisfy;—hear his lasciate ogni speranza, "no one has ever translated a Greek chorus, and no one ever will!" —and the young student, to whom the original is part of the riddle of the painful earth, and who is thankful for small mercies.

I must confess to having had the last of these most present to my mind in the preparation of this version, perhaps because experience has taught me to sympathize with him, with his difficulties in elucidation, with his despairing contemplation of the outcome of his travail, with his bewildered scepticism as to the merits of the ancients who seem to yield to him so little gold in return for so much quarrying, with his gratitude for whatever brightens his toil and helps him to understand how the men of old found beauty where he finds baldness, and grace where he finds stiffness. I am not sure that my predecessors have consciously laboured to smooth his path: even the prose versions from which he snatches a dubious