poetry. George Henry Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, says: 'In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation; and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.'"[1] To single out one instance: there exist numerous translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, in prose and verse. And yet, any one familiar with the most important poetical monument existing[2] can trace but few remains of the graces which charmed him in the original. Cowper and Wright have failed in rendering Homer's rapidity; Pope and Sotheby have failed in rendering his plainness and directness of style and diction; Chapman has failed in rendering his plainness and directness of ideas; and for want of appreciating Homer's nobleness, Newman has failed more conspicuously than any of his predecessors. Some passages of Pope's translation exhibit the translator's prodigious talent. But as Bentley said: "You must not call it Homer." Chapman's translation is praised by Coleridge, who, however, is forced to add: "It will give you a small idea of Homer." Dr. Maginn's Homeric Ballads are vigorous poems in their own way, but as a Homeric translation very often nothing more than a travesty.[3] Similar objections may be raised against any of the other translations of classical poems.
A fourth advantage which the classical studies possess over mathematics and natural sciences, consists in the moral or ethical element, in the many examples they present of the natural virtues, examples
