Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/12

x and it was, in part, the feeling that I was entering on unoccupied ground which led me to undertake a task which might well have called for higher culture and more abundant leisure.

Kindly as my work has been received, I cannot blind myself either to the demerits which critics have pointed out, or those (many more in number) which the work of revision has brought under my notice. Partly from the fact that the work was done chiefly in the scant intervals of leisure left by my usual labours, partly from the wish to get it over and done with before I entered on fresh tasks of another kind, it was carried through the press with somewhat undue haste; required, more or less, pruning and correction throughout, and called, in some instances, for a reconsideration of the principles of translation on which I had acted. I have endeavoured, in revising it, to remedy these defects, and trust that they are, at least, materially reduced in number.

The points in which I have seen reason (over and above changes in the translation of many words and phrases) to modify the judgments which I expressed in the preface to the first edition are as follows:—

(1.) I retain the conviction that unrhymed verse, if only it be melodious enough, and analogous to the tone and feeling of the original, is the best