n our language in a translation worthy of its merits.

Mr. Clough, whose name is well known, not only by scholars, but also by
the lovers of poetry, has performed the work of editor with admirable
diligence, fidelity, and taste. The labor of revision has been neither
slight nor easy. It has, indeed, amounted to not much less than would
have been required for the making of a new translation. The versions in
the translation that bears Dryden's name, made, as they were, by various
hands, and apparently not submitted to the revision of any competent
scholar, were unequal in execution, and were disfigured by many
mistakes, as well as by much that was slovenly in style. At the time
they were made, scholarship in England was not at a high point. Bentley
had not yet lifted it out of mediocrity, and the translators were not
stimulated by the fear either of severe criticism or of comparison
of their labors with any superior work. The numerous defects of this
translation are spoken of by the Langhornes, in the Preface to their
own, with a somewhat jealous severity, which gives unusual vigor to
their sentences. "The diversities of style," say they, "were not the
greatest fault of this strange translation. It was full of the grossest
errors. Ignorance on the one hand, and hastiness or negligence on the
other, had filled it with absurdities in every Life, and inaccuracies on
almost every page." This is a hard, perhaps an extreme judgment; but it
serves to show the difficulties that would attend a revision of such a
work. These difficulties Mr. Clough has fairly met and overcome. We
do not mean to say that he has reduced the whole book to a perfect
uniformity, or even to entire elegance and exactness of style; but he
has corrected inaccuracies, he has removed the chief marks of negligence
or haste; and, after a careful comparison of a considerable portion of
the work as it now appears with the Greek text, we have no hesitation in
saying that this translation answers not merely to the demands of
modern scholarship, but forms a book at once essentially accurate and
delightful for common reading.[A] We think, moreover, that Mr. Clough
was right in choosing the so-called Dryden's translation as the basis of
his work. Its style is not old enough to have become antiquated, while
yet it possesses much of the savor and raciness of age. The book
is interesting from Dryden's connection with it, but still more
so--considering how slight that conn