Charmides | Page 6

reproduce these characteristics, but will re-write the
passage as his author would have written it at first, had he not been
'nodding'; and he will not hesitate to supply anything which, owing to
the genius of the language or some accident of composition, is omitted
in the Greek, but is necessary to make the English clear and
consecutive.
It is difficult to harmonize all these conflicting elements. In a
translation of Plato what may be termed the interests of the Greek and
English are often at war with one another. In framing the English
sentence we are insensibly diverted from the exact meaning of the
Greek; when we return to the Greek we are apt to cramp and overlay
the English. We substitute, we compromise, we give and take, we add a
little here and leave out a little there. The translator may sometimes be
allowed to sacrifice minute accuracy for the sake of clearness and sense.
But he is not therefore at liberty to omit words and turns of expression
which the English language is quite capable of supplying. He must be
patient and self-controlled; he must not be easily run away with. Let
him never allow the attraction of a favourite expression, or a sonorous
cadence, to overpower his better judgment, or think much of an
ornament which is out of keeping with the general character of his
work. He must ever be casting his eyes upwards from the copy to the
original, and down again from the original to the copy (Rep.). His
calling is not held in much honour by the world of scholars; yet he
himself may be excused for thinking it a kind of glory to have lived so
many years in the companionship of one of the greatest of human
intelligences, and in some degree, more perhaps than others, to have
had the privilege of understanding him (Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures:
Disc. xv.).

There are fundamental differences in Greek and English, of which
some may be managed while others remain intractable. (1). The
structure of the Greek language is partly adversative and alternative,
and partly inferential; that is to say, the members of a sentence are
either opposed to one another, or one of them expresses the cause or
effect or condition or reason of another. The two tendencies may be
called the horizontal and perpendicular lines of the language; and the
opposition or inference is often much more one of words than of ideas.
But modern languages have rubbed off this adversative and inferential
form: they have fewer links of connection, there is less mortar in the
interstices, and they are content to place sentences side by side, leaving
their relation to one another to be gathered from their position or from
the context. The difficulty of preserving the effect of the Greek is
increased by the want of adversative and inferential particles in English,
and by the nice sense of tautology which characterizes all modern
languages. We cannot have two 'buts' or two 'fors' in the same sentence
where the Greek repeats (Greek). There is a similar want of particles
expressing the various gradations of objective and subjective
thought--(Greek) and the like, which are so thickly scattered over the
Greek page. Further, we can only realize to a very imperfect degree the
common distinction between (Greek), and the combination of the two
suggests a subtle shade of negation which cannot be expressed in
English. And while English is more dependent than Greek upon the
apposition of clauses and sentences, yet there is a difficulty in using
this form of construction owing to the want of case endings. For the
same reason there cannot be an equal variety in the order of words or
an equal nicety of emphasis in English as in Greek.
(2) The formation of the sentence and of the paragraph greatly differs
in Greek and English. The lines by which they are divided are generally
much more marked in modern languages than in ancient. Both
sentences and paragraphs are more precise and definite--they do not run
into one another. They are also more regularly developed from within.
The sentence marks another step in an argument or a narrative or a
statement; in reading a paragraph we silently turn over the page and
arrive at some new view or aspect of the subject. Whereas in Plato we
are not always certain where a sentence begins and ends; and
paragraphs are few and far between. The language is distributed in a

different way, and less articulated than in English. For it was long
before the true use of the period was attained by the classical writers
both in poetry or prose; it was (Greek). The balance of sentences and
the introduction of paragraphs at suitable intervals must not be
neglected if the