b.

The use of Translations to the literature that has received them has been
questioned. The native genius and energies of a country may, it has been
feared, be oppressed by the importation of wealth and luxuries. The
Hygeian maxim to remain poor for the sake of health and strength, is hard
to act upon. In another sense, we might rather look upon the introduced
strangers as dangerous rivals, who rouse us to woo with better devotion,
and so are useful. Besides, it looks like a timid policy to refuse to know
what our fellows have done. Milton was not subdued, but inflamed, by
conversing with _all_ the great originals. Burns did not the less
Dorically tune his reed, because Pope had sounded in his ear echoes of the
Scamandrian trumpet-blast. The truer and more encouraging doctrine rather
seems to be, that if the land has in its mould the right nurture of
genius, genius will strike its roots, and lift its flowers. In the mean
time, it is to be considered, against such a policy of jealous protection,
that _not_ the influence on the vernacular literature is the first
legitimate claim, but the gain of enlightenment for the human mind, intent
upon enlarging itself by bringing under ken _every where_ that which
itself has been, and that which itself has done _every where_.

The great distinction which we have observed in these remarks on
Translation, between compositions in Prose and Verse, seems here to demand
from us some remarks. A question of the very highest importance in
literature arises--can the Fictitious which the poet relates in Verse be
as well related in Prose? The voice of all ages, countries, languages,
answers--NO! The literature of every civilized nation presents this
phenomenon--a division broad and deep, running through it, and marked by
that distinction in the musical structure of discourse, which we
habitually designate by the names, Prose and Verse. The distinction, as we
all know, is as decided in the substance itself of the composition, as it
is in the musical putting together of the words. Homer, Pindar, Alcaeus,
AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, or Lucretius, Virgil,
Horace, Ovid, upon the one side; and upon the other, Herodotus and
Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and the Stagyrite--or under another still
fortunate sky, Livy, Caesar, Tacitus, Cicero and Seneca--here bare names of
the poets on the one side, of the writers of prose on the other, express
alike to our soberest judgment, and to