[Greek:  thnaton eunta chre didymous aexein gnomas, hoti t’ aurion opseai mounon haliou phaos, choti pentekont’ etea zoan bathyplouton teleis.][38]

And the great Arab poet Abu’l’Ala, whose verse has been admirably translated by Mr. Baerlein, wrote: 

    If you will do some deed before you die,
      Remember not this caravan of death,
      But have belief that every little breath
    Will stay with you for an eternity.

Another instance of the same kind, which may be cited without in any way wishing to advance what Professor Courthope[39] very justly calls “the mean charge of plagiarism,” is Tennyson’s line, “His honour rooted in dishonour stood.”  Euripides[40] expressed the same idea in the following words: 

    [Greek:  ek ton gar aischron esthla mechanometha.]

To cite another case, the following lines of Paradise Lost may be compared with the treatment accorded by Euripides to the same subject: 

                    Oh, why did God,
    Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
    With spirits masculine, create at last
    This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
    Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
    With men as Angels, without feminine;
    Or find some other way to generate
    Mankind?

Euripides wrote: 

[Greek:  o Zeu, ti de kibdelon anthropois kakon, gynaikas es phos heliou katokisas? ei gar broteion etheles speirai genos, ouk ek gynaikon chren paraschesthai tode.][41]

Apart, however, from the process to which allusion is made above, very many instances may, of course, be cited, of translations properly so called which have reproduced not merely the exact sense but the vigour of the original idea in a foreign language with little or no resort to paraphrase.  What can be better than Cowley’s translation of Claudian’s lines?—­

    Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum
      Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus.

    A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees,
    And loves his old contemporary trees,

thus, as Gibbon says,[42] improving on the original, inasmuch as, being a good botanist, Cowley “concealed the oaks under a more general expression.”

Take also the case of the well-known Latin epigram: 

    Omne epigramma sit instar apis:  sit aculeus illi;
      Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui.

It has frequently been translated, but never more felicitously or accurately than by the late Lord Wensleydale: 

    Be epigrams like bees; let them have stings;
    And Honey too, and let them be small things.

On the other hand, the attempt to adhere too closely to the text of the original and to reject paraphrase sometimes leads to results which can scarcely be described as other than the reverse of felicitous.  An instance in point is Sappho’s lines: