drive at the
practice and help yourself, for that is in your own power."

It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy Collier can (to say
the least) perfectly stand comparison with Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier's
real defect as a translator is not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his
imperfect acquaintance with Greek; this is a serious defect, a fatal
one; it rendered a translation like Mr. Long's necessary. Jeremy
Collier's work will now be forgotten, and Mr. Long stands master of the
field, but he may be content, at any rate, to leave his predecessor's
grave unharmed, even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, a handful
of kindly earth.

Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that he is not quite
idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little formal, at least, if not
pedantic, to say _Ethic_ and _Dialectic_, instead of _Ethics_ and
_Dialectics_, and to say "_Hellenes_ and Romans" instead of "_Greeks_
and Romans." And why, too,--the name of Antoninus being preoccupied by
Antoninus Pius,[203]--will Mr. Long call his author Marcus _Antoninus_
instead of Marcus _Aurelius?_ Small as these matters appear, they are
important when one has to deal with the general public, and not with a
small circle of scholars; and it is the general public that the
translator of a short masterpiece on morals, such as is the book of
Marcus Aurelius, should have in view; his aim should be to make Marcus
Aurelius's work as popular as the _Imitation_, and Marcus Aurelius's
name as familiar as Socrates's. In rendering or naming him, therefore,
punctilious accuracy of phrase is not so much to be sought as
accessibility and currency; everything which may best enable the Emperor
and his precepts _volitare per ora virum_[204] It is essential to
render him in language perfectly plain and unprofessional, and to call
him by the name by which he is best and most distinctly known. The
translators of the Bible talk of _pence_ and not _denarii_, and the
admirers of Voltaire do not celebrate him under the name of Arouet.[205]

But, after these trifling complaints are made, one must end, as one
began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. Long for his excellent and
substantial reproduction in English of an invaluable work. In general
the substantiality, soundness, and precision of Mr. Long's rendering are
(I will venture, after all, to give my opinion about them) as
conspicuous as the living spirit with which he treats antiquity; and
these qualities ar