has to be made between prose and verse.  The composition of good prose, which Coleridge described as “words in the right order,” is, indeed, of the utmost importance for all the purposes of the historian, the writer on philosophy, or the orator.  An example of the manner in which fine prose can bring to the mind a vivid conception of a striking event is Jeremy Collier’s description of Cranmer’s death, which excited the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Gladstone.[24] He seemed [Collier wrote] “to repel the force of the fire and to overlook the torture, by strength of thought.”  Nevertheless, the main object of the prose writer, and still more of the orator, should be to state his facts or to prove his case.  Cato laid down the very sound principle “rem tene, verba sequentur,” and Quintilian held that “no speaker, when important interests are involved, should be very solicitous about his words.”  It is true that this principle is one that has been more often honoured in the breach than the observance.  Lucian, in his Lexiphanes,[25] directs the shafts of his keen satire against the meticulous attention to phraseology practised by his contemporaries.  Cardinal Bembo sacrificed substance to form to the extent of advising young men not to read St. Paul for fear that their style should be injured, and Professor Saintsbury[26] mentions the case of a French author, Paul de Saint-Victor, who “used, when sitting down to write, to put words that had struck his fancy at intervals over the sheet, and write his matter in and up to them.”  These are instances of that word-worship run mad which has not infrequently led to dire results, inasmuch as it has tended to engender the belief that statesmanship is synonymous with fine writing or perfervid oratory.  The oratory in which Demosthenes excelled, Professor Bury says,[27] “was one of the curses of Greek politics.”

The attention paid by the ancients to what may be termed tricks of style has probably in some degree enhanced the difficulties of prose translation.  It may not always be easy in a foreign language to reproduce the subtle linguistic shades of Demosthenic oratory—­the Anaphora (repetition of the same word at the beginning of co-ordinate sentences following one another), the Anastrophe (the final word of a sentence repeated at the beginning of one immediately following), the Polysyndeton (the same conjunction repeated), or the Epidiorthosis (the correction of an expression).  Nevertheless, in dealing with a prose composition, the weight of the arguments, the lucidity with which the facts are set forth, and the force with which the conclusions are driven home, rank, or should rank, in the mind of the reader higher than any feelings which are derived from the music of the words or the skilful order in which they are arranged.  Moreover, in prose more frequently than in verse, it is the beauty of the idea expressed which attracts rather than the language in which it is clothed.  Thus, for instance, there can be