THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
3 
But if we may be allowed to adapt to our purpose a line from 
Shakspere— „ Here feel we ^ tfae penalty of BM » 
For the thoughts of an author are one thing, his language 
another. The former may be reached by a translation, the latter 
only by a longer or shorter period of hard labour ; and so mysteri- 
ously are the two interblended, that it may perhaps be safely 
affirmed that every author suffers something in translation. There' 
is, however, a pleasure in* struggling hard to discover the meaning 
of a sentence in an unknown tongue, that can be compared to 
nothing but the pleasures of the chase. With mingled feelings 
of courage and despair, we enter the maze bristling with all the 
difficulties of etymology, grammar, and idiom, expressed in words 
of strange look and uncouth sound; but on we go, armed with 
grammar and dictionary, till at length the obscure becomes clear, 
and we carry off in triumph the precious meaning of the author as 
fresh and warm as when it first issued from his brain. In the 
life of Elihu Burritt, the great American linguist and philan- 
thropist, we are told how amidst many difficulties he commenced 
the study of Greek. After repeated failures, he at length suc- 
ceeded one morning before the other lodgers were up in mastering 
in the original the opening lines of Homer's Iliad, and with 
pardonable pride he took a walk in honour of the victory. Many 
of us no doubt have shared his triumph, as we have made out 
for ourselves in the Hebrew original the story of the Creation 
of the World, sublime for its antiquity, if for no higher reason ; 
or, taking up the Mahabharata, have puzzled out the tale of 
Nala, "Vlrasena's mighty son." In kind, if not in degree, these 
high pleasures are shared — 
"0 fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint !" — 
by every schoolboy or girl who patiently works out the meaning of 
a passage in Caesar or Xenophon. 
But much of the literature that time has preserved has till 
lately defied all the sagacity of scholars, and the question has been, 
"Who is able to open the book and to loose the seals thereof?" 
It would be very pleasant if I had the requisite power, and you 
the patience, to show what has been accomplished in this depart- 
ment during, say, the last ten years. The subject is a tempting 
one, but I must confine myself to a few generalities. Turning 
first to the East, where the more powerful beams of the sun seem 
b 2 
