AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION. 
159 
deviate from that uuiformity occasionally. The converse of this 
principle is that, under the like conditions of limitation, no one 
word in the language to be translated into should be used to express 
different words of the original, i.e., if "sword" (for example) be 
the true correlative of "ensis" some other correlative must be 
found for "ferrum," as " steel," or some similar word. A corollary 
to these two propositions is that positive words must only be ren- 
dered by positive, and negative by negative. 
Connected with these primary principles of uniformity and 
exactness are their applications to manifold details. Among these 
details prominent places are occupied by moods, voices, tenses, 
cases, and particles. An abstract, of course, can only j iist present 
the outlines of a subject, and we must, therefore, content ourselves 
with very briefly pointing out the line which the lecturer took. Of 
the moods he said nothing specific, nor yet much as to the voices ; 
these being matters too generally admitted to be important to need 
any particular notice, except that he maintained the existence of a 
"middle voice" in our own language, although modern careless- 
ness is allowing that existence to be wellnigh forgotten. On the 
difficulties presented by tenses he dwelt more explicitly, and took 
occasion to recommend, as a very valuable aid to their right under- 
standing, a little work on The Powers of the Greek Tenses^ by F. 
W. Harper, Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge. So again with 
regard to cases; he contended that each case has an original 
peculiarity of its own, and that the differences of meaning attach- 
ing to such prepositions as govern more than one case — which to 
the youthful beginner or the careless observer may appear arbitrary 
— will, on examination, be found to be strictly the result of these 
root-meanings. Similarly the cases governed by verbs, &c., will 
be found explicable by the same principle. Particles, too, the 
bugbear of the tyro in Homer, for instance, especially, will be 
found, however refractory they may at first sight seem, to be as 
amenable to law. The difficulty of discovering their derivation and 
original meaning may be great in the first instance ; but that diffi- 
culty once surmounted, the accretive senses, which in course of 
time gradually gathered round the root-meaning, will generally in 
the case of particles, no less than of other words, be found easily 
traceable, and capable of systematic exposition. Other niceties, in 
the use (for example) of the article and the pronouns, the lecturer 
could only just touch on ; but he drew attention particularly to the 
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