It is beyond a question that one's intellectual dominion is greatly extended even by the mere ability to read other languages than his own. For it is precisely those works which are most characteristic, which most deepen and widen the mind, which quicken the sense of beauty, which beckon the imagination-it is precisely those which are untranslatable, nay, which are so in exact proportion as they are masterly. This is especially true of the great poets, the glow of whose genius fuses the word and the idea into a rich Corinthian metal which no imitation can replace. One feels this instantly with any translation of Shakespeare even into German, the language which has the nearest affinities of blood with our own. A translation can enable us to form a just enough estimate of an author's general power of mind, of a poet's constructive ability, but the very best of them cannot render for us that which is the characteristic of all great and individual writing, namely, Style, any more than a plaster cast can reproduce a marble statue. Shakespeare, you recollect, with that inevitable tact in the choice of epithets which gives to every careless phrase of his an esoteric as well as exoteric meaning, makes Quince exclaim, when he sees Bottom with the ass's head on his shoulders,- "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated."

There are some translations which have almost the merit of original works, like Sir Thomas Urquhart's of Rabelais, for instance, but it is almost impossible that any foreigner should acquire that perfect intimacy with the niceties of a language which is essential to the thorough comprehension of an author and especially a poet. Both Tieck and Schlegal have mined very deep in the genius of Shakespeare, of his power and art they were among the first to form an adequate conception, and yet in their translation, where Macbeth says: "Here on this bank and shoal of Time," they give us instead: "Here on this bench and school of Time," and defend it as a better reading in a note. Another German critic of great pretensions, pronounces "the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy" to be Shakespeare's on the strength of structure and diction. Quoting from the last named play, he declares "the description of remorse,-

'Divines and dying men may talk of hell, But in my breast its several torments dwell.'

can have proceeded from no other pen than Shakespeare's." On equally strong grounds we might pronounce him the author of that concise epic, Humpty Dumpty.

It is most commonly the case that a translator does not so much convert an author into his own language as into himself. How utterly unlike their originals are Pope's Homer, and Hoole's Tasso, Murphy's Tacitus and Francis's Horace? The greater the author, the more he suffers, because power of expression is always a chief part of the outfit of a great author. Certain phrases may be translated, like the famous: "They make a solitude and call it peace" of Tacitus, but who ever saw a satisfactory version of the concluding paragraphs of the Life of Agricola?

The majority of books are of that exemplary kind which no gentleman's library can be without, but there is another and rarer kind without which no man's education is complete. These are the representative books in which epochs culminated like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare,- or which mark the transitions of the human mind like Cervantes and Gothe. But here Nature deals kindly and mercifully with us, and it is seldom that she gives more than one great speaker or singer to one race. There is a New England proverb which says of a fastidious person-"the best is not good enough for him," and this kind of fastidiousness I think one may and should exercise in regard to books. Cum bonis ambula, said Cato speaking of men, and one may say of books, keep company with the best. It was because the men of the century from 1550 to 1650 were confined to classic society in books, that their minds and styles acquired a dignity of gait and gesture which is now, in the fool's paradise of novels and newspapers, obsolete.

II.Originality and Tradition in Literature.Plutarchian parallels are apt to be a little forced by the overpowering necessity of finding analogues and coincidences betwen two sets of facts in which though there may be a general outward similarity in the events, there is no inward likeness in the causes by which the events were brought about, and the circumstances which modified them. In biography it is this action and reaction of the man upon the element in which he works, and of that element upon him, which tests and gauges the quality and amount of his character, the only thing of permanent value in him. Character is not merely individuality, but individuality acting with force and steadiness in a given direction. Perhaps among all literary men Dante is the highest type of this. In modern times, Voltaire (with all his weaknesses) and Lessing, and among living men Carlyle and Emerson, are examples of the same thing. This need not and does not, you will observe, imply any absolute originality, if indeed there be such a thing. Freedom of thought is deeply indebted to Voltaire, and German unity, the process of which is going on under our very eyes, one of the most important and far-reaching events of the century, may be traced