[Greek:  He ta rhoda, rhodoessan echeis charin; alla ti poleis,
      sauten, e ta rhoda, ee synamphothera?]

Mr. Pott, in his Greek Love Songs and Epigrams, adopted the triolet metre, which is singularly suitable to the subject, in dealing with this epigram, and gracefully translated thus: 

    Which roses do you offer me,
    Those on your cheeks, or those beside you? 
    Since both are passing fair to see,
    Which roses do you offer me? 
    To give me both would you agree,
    Or must I choose, and so divide you? 
    Which roses do you offer me,
    Those on your cheeks or those beside you?

Here the two lines of the original are expanded into eight lines in the translation, and some fresh matter is introduced.  Dr. Grundy imposes more severe limitations on his muse.  His translation, which is more literal, but at the same time singularly felicitous, is as follows: 

    Hail, thou who hast the roses, thou hast the rose’s grace! 
    But sellest thou the roses, or e’en thine own fair face?

Any one of literary taste will find it difficult to decide which of these versions to prefer, and will impartially welcome both.

It cannot, however, be doubted that strict adherence to Dr. Grundy’s principle occasionally leads to results which are open to criticism from the point of view of English style.  A case in point is his translation of Plato’s epitaph on a shipwrecked sailor: 

    [Greek:  Nauegou taphos eimi; ho d’ antion esti georgou;
      hos hali kai gaie xynos hupest’ Aides.]

Dr. Grundy’s translation, which is as follows, adheres closely to the original text, but somewhat grates on the English ear: 

    A sailor’s tomb am I; o’er there a yokel’s tomb there be;
    For Hades lies below the earth as well as ’neath the sea.

Another instance is the translation of the epigram of Nicarchus on The Lifeboat, in which the inexorable necessities of finding a rhyme to “e’en Almighty Zeus” has compelled the translator to resort to the colloquial and somewhat graceless phrase “in fact, the very deuce.”

But criticisms such as these may be levelled against well-nigh all translators.  They merely constitute a reason for holding that Shelley was not far wrong in the opinion quoted above.  Few translators have, indeed, been able to work up to the standard of William Cory’s well-known version of Callimachus’s epitaph on Heraclitus, which Dr. Grundy rightly remarks is “one of the most beautiful in our language,” or to Dr. Symonds’s translation of the epitaph on Prote, which “is perhaps the finest extant version in English of any of the verses from the Anthology.”  But many have contributed in a minor degree to render these exquisite products of the Greek genius available to English readers, and amongst them Dr. Grundy may fairly claim to occupy a distinguished place.  He says in his preface, with great truth, that the poets of the Anthology are never wearisome.  Neither is Dr. Grundy.