The case of the translator of poetry, which Coleridge defined as "the best words in the best order," is manifestly very different. A phrase which is harmonious or pregnant with fire in one language may become discordant, flat, and vapid when translated into another. Shelley spoke of "the vanity 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."
Longinus has told us[30] that "beautiful words are the very light of thought" ([Greek: phôs gar tô onti idion tou nou ta kala onomata]), but it will often happen, in reading a fine passage, that on analysing the sentiments evoked, it is difficult to decide whether they are due to the thought or to the beauty of the words. A mere word, as in the case of Edgar Poe's "Nevermore," has at times inspired a poet. When Keats, speaking of Melancholy, says:
She lives with Beauty--Beauty that must die-- And Joy, whose hand is ever on his lips, Bidding adieu,
... Young As Eve with Nature's daybreak on her face,
the pleasure, both of sense and sentiment, is in each case derived alike from the music of the language and the beauty of the ideas. But in such lines as
Arethusa arose from her couch of snows, etc.,
or Coleridge's description of the river Alph running
Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea,
it is the language rather than the idea which fascinates. Professor Walker, speaking of the most exquisitely harmonious lyric ever written in English, or perhaps in any other language,[31] says with great truth: "The reader of _Lycidas_ rises from it ready to grasp the 'two-handed engine' and smite; though he may be doubtful what the engine is, and what is to be smitten."
It may be observed, moreover, that one of the main difficulties to be encountered in translating some of the masterpieces of ancient literature arises from their exquisite simplicity. Although the indulgence in glaring improprieties of language in the pursuit of novelty of thought was not altogether unknown to the ancients, and was, indeed, stigmatised by Longinus with the epithet of "corybantising,"[32] the full development of this pernicious practice has been reserved for the modern world. Dryden made himself indirectly responsible for a good deal of bad poetry when he said that great wits were allied to madness. The late Professor Butcher,[33] as also Lamb in his essay on "The Sanity of True Genius," have both pointed out that genius and high ability are eminently sane.