At the close of his book Mr. Gooch very truly points out that "the scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include every aspect of the life of humanity." Many of the social and economic subjects of which the historian has now to treat are of an extremely controversial character. However high may be the ideal of truth, which will be entertained, it would appear that the various forms in which the facts of history may be stated, as also the conclusions to be drawn from these facts, will tend to divergence rather than to uniformity of treatment. It is not, therefore, probable that the partisan historian--or, at all events, the historian who will be accused of partisanship--will altogether disappear from literature. Neither, on the whole, is his disappearance to be desired, for it would almost certainly connote the composition of somewhat vapid and colourless histories.
The verdicts which Mr. Gooch passes on the historians whose writings he briefly summarises are eminently judicious, though it cannot be expected that in all cases they will command universal assent. In a work which ranges over so wide a field it is scarcely possible that some slips should not have occurred. We may indicate one of these, which it would be as well to correct in the event of any future editions being published. On p. 435 the authorship of _Fieramosca_ and _Nicolo dei Lapi_, which were written by Azeglio, is erroneously attributed to Cesare Balbo.
[Footnote 76: _History and Historians of the Nineteenth Century_. By G.P. Gooch. London: Longmans and Co. 10s. 6d.]
Shelley, himself a translator of one of the best known of the epigrams of the Anthology, has borne emphatic testimony to the difficulties of translation. "It were as wise," he said, "to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet."
The task of rendering Greek into English verse is in some respects specially difficult. In the first place, the translator has to deal with a language remarkable for its unity and fluency, qualities which, according to Curtius (_History of Greece_, i. 18), are the result of the "delicately conceived law, according to which all Greek words must end in vowels, or such consonants as give rise to no harshness when followed by others, viz. _n_, _r_, and _s_." Then, again, the translator must struggle with the difficulties arising from the fact that the Greeks regarded condensation in speech as a fine art. Demetrius, or whoever was the author of _De Elocutione_, said: "The first grace of style is that which results from compression." The use of an inflected language of course enabled the Greeks to carry this art to a far higher degree of perfection than can be attained by any modern Europeans. Jebb, for instance, takes twelve words--"Well hath he spoken for one who giveth heed not to fall"--to express a sentiment which Sophocles (_OEd. Tyr._ 616) is able to compress into four--[Greek: kalôs elexen eulaboumenô pesein]. Moreover, albeit under the stress of metrical and linguistic necessity the translator must generally indulge in paraphrase, let him beware lest in doing so he sacrifices that quality in which the Greeks excelled, to wit, simplicity. Nietzsche said, with great truth, "Die Griechen sind, wie das Genie, einfach; deshalb sind sie die unsterblichen Lehrer." Further, the translator has at times so to manipulate his material as to incorporate into his verse epithets and figures of speech of surpassing grace and expressiveness, which do not readily admit of transfiguration into any modern language; such, for instance, as the "much-wooed white-armed Maiden Muse" ([Greek: polymnêstê leukôlene parthene Mousa]) of Empedocles; the "long countless Time" ([Greek: makros kanarithmêtos Chronos]), or "babbling Echo" ([Greek: athyrostomos Achô]) of Sophocles; the "son, the subject of many prayers" ([Greek: polyeuchetos uios]) and countless other expressions of the Homeric Hymns; the "blooming Love with his pinions of gold" ([Greek: ho d' amphithalês Eros chrysopteros hênias]) of Aristophanes; "the eagle, messenger of wide-ruling Zeus, the lord of Thunder" ([Greek: aietos, euryanaktos angelos Zênos erispharagou]) of Bacchylides; or mighty Pindar's "snowy Etna nursing the whole year's length her frozen snow" ([Greek: niphoess' Aitna panetes chionos oxeias tithêna]).