characteristic is incommunicable grace of expression, the demand on the
translator's powers would seem to be indefinitely increased.  Yet the
time appears to be gone by when men of great original gifts could find
satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others; and the
work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior
pretension.  Among these, however, there are still degrees; and the
experience which I have gained since I first adventured as a poetical
translator has made me doubt whether I may not be ill-advised in
resuming the experiment under any circumstances.  Still, an experiment
of this kind may have an advantage of its own, even when it is
unsuccessful; it may serve as a piece of embodied criticism, showing
what the experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success, and
may thus, to borrow Horace's own metaphor of the whetstone, impart to
others a quality which it is itself without.  Perhaps I may be allowed,
for a few moments, to combine precept with example, and imitate my
distinguished friend and colleague, Professor Arnold, in offering some
counsels to the future translator of Horace's Odes, referring, at the
same time, by way of illustration, to my own attempt. 

The first thing at which, as it seems to me, a Horatian translator