believed it before he was born; and he, in the mirror of his poesy, but holds up to them their common belief. But for this tenaciousness of the known, and adherence to standard, a language could never exist, but must volatilize and evaporate as fast as it formed. It is this alone that makes its formation possible, and stamps it with duration—a duration equal to that of the race, but for extrinsic causes. If no foreign influence from without operated on a people's language, they would no more change it than the blackbirds and throstles of their woods alter the notes they have had from the beginning. It is an error to talk of a language changing by the gradual course of time by the people themselves. The instrument may vibrate to a larger and more varied music as their ideas expand, but the new melodies will be but combinations of the same notes, and played with the same keys. One ground of supposing self-change in a language is the variation in orthography, which is very variable before a people have agreed by what letters to express different sounds-i.e. how they shall spell what they speak. But the error of taking the variations of early orthography as variations in the sounds, or the words they are intended to represent, will be plain to any one who will compare the different ways in which illiterate persons attempt to spell words, which, nevertheless, they all pronounce exactly alike-words which, read aloud by the parties who wrote them, would resume their identity, but which, if read by an educated person according to his notion of the powers of the letters, might be recognized by none.

And the error is further fostered by the changes which have been effected by the admixture of cognate tribes, whose various words from similar roots subsist together, and give the notion of the people changing their own. tongue. But a little reflection will convince one that a people who could originate such changes would never have

ing the exploits of their ancestors, and, conversely of the people subdued, especially if the latter have been for the most part expelled, may represent the vanquished as giants. Again, where there is actual difference of stature between two nations that are in contact, as Cæsar relates of the Gauls, who ridiculed the Romans as dwarfs-De Bell. Gall. lib. ii. c. 30. If the shorter people expel the taller, legends will be rife of giants overcome by force or guile by men of ordinary stature. The consciousness of truth

will not allow a reversal of the facts, which, however they may be coloured, will not err in ascribing policy and intellectual superiority to the smaller and prevailing race, while obtuseness and physical strength are the portion of the conquered. Jack the Giant-killer will be the popular expression of the relations between them.

But if, on the other hand, it be the powerful and largelimbed people that have prevailed over one less physically favoured, then stories of dwarfs will be rife, whose power of secreting themselves and their treasures from human sight, will express the condition of the oppressed remnant of a proscribed people, who endeavour to elude the notice and rapacity of their oppressors.

Stories of travellers would augment the lore among a people once prepared for its reception. Who knows but penguins, standing stupidly of a row on the sea-shore, and seen by some Phoenician trader, as his vessel shot by, may have originated the Homeric legend of the pigmies and cranes, and the wars waged between them-actual wars, probably, in their struggles for fish.

Another source of the marvellous legend willl be found in the natural phenomena of a country. The mirage of the desert and the Fata Morgana are more than enough to underlie the wildest Oriental fiction. Echoes, also, in wild regions, amid rocks, and woods, and precipices, and foaming waterfalls, would impress the most unimaginative

And the gigantic

with a sense of the supernatural. spectre that walks in mist before the traveller in the Hartz mountains may not always find him sufficiently self-possessed to ascertain that it is but his own reflection magnified that companions and affrights him.

XXXIII.

ON LITERAL TRANSLATION IN LEARNING

A LANGUAGE.

N buying second-hand books, I am always curious about the comments of former owners, and inspect the margins with some interest. A Greek Herodotus that I picked up yesterday (15th August, 1862), for its cheapness and excellent type, has pencilled comments of a former owner, evidently a student, and of some vigour, and who hath the excellent habit of noting how long it took him to get through such and such strokes of work. On the Euterpe he notes that he "began it January 5th, 1847," and at the end that he "finished it on the 13th January, 1847, by himself." I have noted some of the pencilled meanings to words, which, apparently for helping his memory, he has placed in the margin, as they will illustrate the kind of translation usual in such case. He would appear to have been more anxious for idiomatic English rendering of the particular passage than careful of the intrinsic force of the word itself in the original, and has therefore given the meaning of the phrase, but not with the meaning of the words. The defect of the method is that, even where a passage is vigorously rendered, the student makes but

little progress in exact knowledge of Greek, because he is in the habit of importing ideas which do not belong to the word itself, although they go very well with the idea for which the word stands in that place, but will not go well with the idea for which the word will stand where he next meets with it. And yet, in both cases, the word itself means the same thing, although in the one it will bear to be capped with an addition, that it will reject in the other.

Taking instances at random, at Herod. vi. 15, oùn ¿dìnalɛvv, he renders "disdained," which is, no doubt, meant for a vigorous rendering of they "judged it not right," and expresses a tone of mind very probable under the circumstances, but of that tone the word itself says nothing. The notion of contemptuous warmth in the matter, though it invigorate here, will, in another part, but embarrass the student if he attempt to clog the word with what does not belong to it.

At vi. 16, adúvatov, he renders "disabled," which is well enough in that passage, for the ships had been “disabled;" but, nevertheless, adúvatos means simply unable at the time, weak, feeble, and has no reference to a former vigour, which is implied in the word "disabled." adúvato avopɛs, at v. 9, are weak, feeble men, imbecilli, parum robusti, and not "disabled."

At vi. 13, ἐν κέρδει ἐποιεῦντο περιποιῆσαι, he renders, "considered themselves lucky in saving," instead of," they thought it a gain," &c. The two phrases agree well enough for the particular passage, but yet négdos is not "luck," but "gain." The legitimate and expected profit of a trader would hardly be called "luck," though it be κέρδος.

At v. 92, malováτegov, he renders "more defiled with blood;" and this idea of "blood" is given in the dictionaries, and yet I should prefer adhering to the sole

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notion expressed, viz. "slaughter," from pévw, to kill; slaughter-stained" would be good rendering, and the one that will always be serviceable, meet the word where you will. It is true that "blood" and "slaughter" go much together, but they are not inseparable, or the lancet would be put from its function; apóvos, as an epithet of Ares, frequent in the Iliad, means literally "slaughterstained," which, of course, is "blood-stained," because of the blood shed in battle, but it is the "slaughter alone that is expressed; the "blood" is understood and included in stained; contrary to aiμatóes, which, under circumstances, may be rendered "murderous," but in which the "blood" is expressed, the "slaughter" not. To the rendering of a particular passage the distinction may be trivial, but to the accurate knowledge of the language, and keeping your ideas clear, it is of the utmost importance. And the practice of holding fast by the precise root-meaning of the word will operate favourably for the student in ridding him of the tædium of looking out the same word over and over again in his dictionary. This necessity of looking out the same word repeatedly is too familiar to most students of the classics, and impedes their progress. The cause is clear. The student looks out a word a second time through failing to catch the precise root-meaning at the first, and taking, instead of it, a secondary and side meaning, which is rather the method of expressing the idea in his own tongue than in that from which he is translating. And the odds are that, unless he mend his method, what he did the first time he will repeat a second and a third, and so continue, until a better instinct, almost unconsciously, after longer contact with the classics than is allowed to the bulk, shall have brought him into better relation to those tongues. But, in any case, the defect of the method will cling to him until he is aware of its being defective, and sets vigorously about the