House of Atreus 2nd ed (1889)/Preface 2
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In republishing the House of Atreus, I have striven to remove the flaws to which private or public criticism called my attention. A grave mistranslation of Choeph., l. 216, has, I hope, been banished. Mr. A. O. Prickard and Professor Margoliouth independently detected and denounced it to me: I now plead, with Orestes—
μίασμα δ᾽ ἔκπλυτον πέλει.
. . . . χρόνος καθαίρει πάντα γηράσκων ὁμοῦ.
I may be permitted to add a statement of the general principle that I have followed in making alterations. Errors in scholarship I have endeavoured to remove: where the English has been criticized, I have always considered, and often obeyed, the criticism: sometimes I have resisted it in obedience to a higher law,—e.g., several critics objected to the use of the word "spilth"; I have retained it, as used by Shakespeare, and therefore fitted for tragic poetry, though no longer in ordinary use. With regard to the form of the translation, I have not made any serious change. Were I now attempting the thing for the first time, I should not throw so much of the first chorus of the Agamemnon into quatrains. But in this, as in other cases, that which was originally difficult to do has become almost impossible to undo and do again. The previous translation stands like an erring and prohibitory ghost, 'μηκέτ᾽ ἐσέλθῃς τάδε᾽ φωνῶν.
Winchester, October, 1889.