5. I accepted the invitation. I knew that the description he had given of the homes of thousands was not an exaggerated description. I felt in my conscience there was a work which somebody must do, and therefore I accepted his invitation and from that time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the resolution we had made.

:

The first thing to notice here is the comminuted style of English as compared with Greek. It is broken up, and thus leads to repetition: 'I accepted his invitation' comes twice in the piece. The fact is, that in English the logical arrangement is just a little sacrificed, in order to put the fact in a summary form at the head of the sentence: this carries with it the necessity of saying the same thing twice over: first at the beginning, as a summary of the outward narrative, the relation of fact: then again later, when the reasons are given. This repetition, which in English adds greatly to the lucidity and impressiveness, and is a really artistic device used by all the greatest orators, is alien to the spirit of Greek. The longer connected sentence, with the feeling leading up to the fact at the end, is more in accordance with their idiom.

For the rest, it would be rather tiresome in Greek to repeat thousands,' it will be enough to say 'the people.' 'Not exaggerated' may be done simpler by saying 'true.' 'In my conscience' will be simply κaт' éμаvтóv. The rest consists only of small points of order and words, which will best be seen from the Greek: εἰδὼς δὲ ἐγὼ τὸν δῆμον τῷ ὄντι τοιαῦτα πάσχοντα [or οὐδὲν μεῖζον ἐκεῖνον λέξαντα ὧν ἀληθῶς ἔπασχεν ὁ δῆμος] καὶ ὁμολογῶν ἅμα κατ ἐμαυτὸν δεῖν τινα τούτῳ ἐπιχειρεῖν τῷ ἔργῳ, συνήνεσα ταῦτα αὐτῷ συμπράξειν· καὶ ἐξ ἐκείνου τοῦ χρόνου οὐδεπώποτε ἐπαυσάμεθα ἃ τότε ἔδοξεν ἐξεργαζόμενοι.

XIII.-PRESENT DISCONTENTS-(BURKE).

1. Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of the country, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the clearest and firmest proofs: because their account resolves itself into this short but discouraging proposition, that we have a very good ministry, but that we are a very bad people; that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our own peace and prosperity. 2. It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable, to keep the peace. 3. If our dominions abroad are the root which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the deficiencies of law. 4. Whatever may be intended, these things are not yet professed. We seem therefore to be driven to absolute despair; for we have no other materials to work upon than those out of which God has been pleased to form the inhabitants of this island.

1. Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of the country, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the clearest and firmest proofs: because their account resolves itself into this short but discouraging proposition, that we have a very good ministry, but that we are a very bad people; that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our own peace and prosperity.

We must clearly begin with the condition (or protasis) of the sentence. 'The present convulsions' may be done by a verb: 'what the people suffer.' In the next sentence 'great reluctance' had better be the idiomatic ἑκών γε εἶναι. 'Only on the compulsion' will be 'not unless I were compelled.' Down to 'firmest proofs,' the piece may be done. with fair literalness; but the rest of the sentence requires a good deal of recasting. The extreme abstractness of the clause which begins 'because their account resolves itself into,' etc., forces us to forsake the Greek; we must go by the sense. Something of this sort: What do they say? This in reality-short but painful to say-that our politicians are,' etc. A little further on we come to the phrase 'we bite the hand that feeds us.' This is obviously too violent a metaphor to be possible in Greek without some sort of preparation to soften it; the simplest way is to convert it into a simile straight off, and say, 'like bad dogs we bite the hand,' etc. In the last sentence we shall be wise to use the common device of putting the relative part of the clause first; so that it will run somewhat in this way: 'those who aim at nothing more than peace,' etc., 'these we abuse, and resist.'

The whole will then be as follows: εἰ δὲ ταῦτα ἀληθῆ λέγουσιν, οὐδὲν δήπου ἀτοπώτερόν ἐστιν ὧν στασιά ζουσιν [or πάσχουσι καὶ στασιάζουσιν] οἱ πολῖται· ἐγὼ

δὲ οὐδαμῶς ἂν ἑκών γε εἶναι πιθοίμην, εἰ μὴ σαφεστάτοις καὶ βεβαιοτάτοις τεκμηρίοις ἀναγκαζοίμην· τί γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι ἄρα λέγουσιν; τοῦτο δήπου τῷ ὄντι λέγουσι, βραχὺ μὲν λόγῳ, ἔργῳ δὲ λυπηρόν, ὅτι βελτίστους μὲν ἔχομεν τοὺς ἄρχοντας, αὐτοὶ δὲ οὐδενός ἔσμεν ἄξιοι, καὶ ὥσπερ φαῦλοι κύνες τοὺς τρέφοντας δάκνομεν, καὶ μανίᾳ τινὶ ἠγριωμένοι τοὺς οὐδὲν μᾶλλον πράσσοντας ἢ ὅπως ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ εὐδαι μονίᾳ ἐσόμεθα αἰσχρῶς ὅμως ἐπηρεάζομεν καὶ οἷς ἂν βουλεύωσιν ἀεὶ ἐναντιούμεθα.

Note (1) the long participial clause τοὺς οὐδὲν ἐσόμεθα might be done by a relative, οἵπερ. Then after ἐσόμεθα insert with the usual lucidity of rhetoric τούτους ὅμως, etc. ;—(2) I use οὐδὲν after τοὺς, where the generic μŋdèv would equally well suit, because the objector would naturally like to state that these politicians actually have no other motive.

2. It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable, to keep the peace.

We must clearly avoid the extreme abstractness of the first phrase. The simplest way of doing this is to make 'the country' the subject of the whole sentence somewhat in the following way: And the city suffers still more severely in this respect, that,' etc. In the second half also the idiomatic way of presenting the idea is to make the nation' the subject. Notice further that the main reason in English why the clause is so abstract is that the writer wants to bring 'the wealth' strongly to the front, and make 'the cause' the predicate; and that this is done in Greek quite easily and simply by the ord the words. The clause will then run, 'For if on account of wealth, the people,' etc., and the whole will be in Greek as follows: καὶ ἔτι χαλεπώτερον

ἔχει ταύτῃ ἡ πόλις, εἰ ἀληθῆ λέγουσιν, διότι ταύτης τῆς νόσου οὐδὲν ἄκος ὑπάρχει. εἰ μὲν γὰρ διὰ πλοῦτον οὕτως ἐν ταραχῇ εἰσιν, οὐ δήπου τὴν πενίαν φύλακα ἐπάξονται ὥστε τὸν δῆμον κατασχεῖν.

3. If our dominions abroad are the root which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the deficiencies of law.

Again we have a metaphor too suddenly introduced for Greek we must follow the same method as before, and convert it into a simile: 'if out of our foreign rule as out of a bad

root sedition has grown so strong,' etc. 'The fruit' may be 'what grows from.' In the second sentence there is no difficulty except the common one of abstracts; we need only say that the executive power' will be the nominative of the sentence, and will be personal-'the magistrates': 'if owing to our being free the magistrates are less powerful,' etc. The only thing that need be added is that very often in Greek the liveliness of the sentence is very much increased by introducing a question instead of expressing the sense by a negative, as in the English. So here, both clauses of this sentence may be very well expressed by putting the thing in an interrogative shape.

We shall then have: εἰ δὲ ἐκ τῆς ἔξωθεν ἀρχῆς ὥσπερ ἐκ φαύλης ῥίζης ἐς τοσοῦτον ηὔξηται καὶ τέθηλεν ἡ στάσις, πότερον ἐκείνην ἐξορύξουσιν, ὥστε τὰ ἐξ αὐτῆς γενόμενα διαφθεῖραι ; εἰ δὲ διὰ τὸ ἐλευθέρους ἄρα εἶναι ἡμᾶς ἧσσον κρατοῦσιν οἱ ἄρχοντες, πότερον τὴν τυραννίδα διανοοῦνται καταστῆσαι ἵνα τὸ ἐλλιπὲς τῶν νόμων πληρωθῇ ;