Whenever this is attempted, great licence must be allowed to the
translator in getting rid of all those poetical common forms which are
foreign to the genius of prose. If the work is to be translated into
prose, let it be into such prose as we write and speak among ourselves.
A volume of poetical prose, i.e. affected prose, had better be in verse
outright at once. Poetical prose is never tolerable for more than a very
short bit at a time. And it may be questioned whether poetry itself is
not better kept short in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.