y and precision of the words
that express numbers in the multiplication table. Ten times
one are ten--not ten and one one-millionth. Having got the
idea into your mind with the precision, accuracy, and beauty
of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in
English. Suppose you have knowledge of no language but your
own. The thought comes to you in the mysterious way in which
thoughts are born, and struggles for expression in apt words.
If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the
thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or
rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the phrase.
Your sentence commands you, not you the sentence. The extemporary
speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise
and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains a literary
excellence which gives him immortality. But the conscientious
translator has no such refuge. He is confronted by the inexorable
original. He cannot evade or shirk. He must try and try
and try again until he has got the exact thought expressed
in its English equivalent. This is not enough. He must get
an English expression if the resources of the language will
furnish it, which will equal as near as may be the dignity
and beauty of the original. He must not give you pewter for
silver, or pinchbeck for gold, or mica for diamond. This
practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches
of his own noble English tongue. It will give a habitual
nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase
will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks.
The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator
will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the
great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us
as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its
excellence.

The value of translation is very different from that of original
written composition. Cicero says:

"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."

Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you
get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly
you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an
injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct
or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states
his preference for translation. He says that at first he used
to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning