"
Norman spoke with so much reverence for Mae's greatest idol that her
heart warmed and she smiled approval, though for argument's sake she
remained on the other side.
"Isn't a translation more like an engraver's art, and aren't fine
engravings to be sought and admired even when we know the great original
in its glory of color? Then all writing is only translation, not
copying. Shakspeare had to translate the tongues he found in stones,
the books he found in brooks, with twenty-six little characters and his
great mind, into what we all study, and love, and strive after. But
he had to use these twenty-six characters in certain hard, Anglo-Saxon
forms and confine himself to them. When he wanted to talk about
'fen-sucked fogs,'
and such damp, shivery places, he is all right, but when he sings of
'love's light wings,' and all that nonsense, he is impeded; now open to
him 'Italian, the language of angels'--you know the old rhyme--and
see what a chance he has among the "liquid l's and bell-voiced m's and
crushed tz's.
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