The respectable and sometimes excellent translations of Bohn's
Library have done for literature what railroads have done for
internal intercourse. I do not hesitate to read all the books I have
named, and all good books, in translations. What is really best in
any book is translatable,--any real insight or broad human sentiment.
Nay, I observe, that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral
tone, it seems easy and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of
the original into phrases of equal melody. The Italians have a fling
at translators, _i traditori traduttori_, but I thank them. I rarely
read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book
in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be
beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which
receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as
soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to
Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them
rendered for me in my mother tongue.
For history, there is great choice of ways to bring the student
through early Rome. If he can read Livy, he has a good book; but one
of the short English compends, some Goldsmith or Ferguson, should be
used, that will place in the cycle the bright stars of Plutarch.
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