The respectable and sometimes excellent translations of Bohn's Library
have done for literature what railroads have done for internal
intercourse. I do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, and
all good books, in translations. What is really best in any book is
translatable,--any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe
that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy
and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into
phrases of equal melody. The Italians have a fling at translators,--_i
traditori traduttori_; but I thank them. I rarely read any Latin, Greek,
German, Italian, sometimes not a French book in the original, which I
can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great
metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from
every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the
Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother-tongue.--R. W.
EMERSON. _Books._