intervals over the sheet, and write his matter in and up to them." These
are instances of that word-worship run mad which has not infrequently
led to dire results, inasmuch as it has tended to engender the belief
that statesmanship is synonymous with fine writing or perfervid oratory.
The oratory in which Demosthenes excelled, Professor Bury says,[27] "was
one of the curses of Greek politics."

The attention paid by the ancients to what may be termed tricks of style
has probably in some degree enhanced the difficulties of prose
translation. It may not always be easy in a foreign language to
reproduce the subtle linguistic shades of Demosthenic oratory--the
Anaphora (repetition of the same word at the beginning of co-ordinate
sentences following one another), the Anastrophe (the final word of a
sentence repeated at the beginning of one immediately following), the
Polysyndeton (the same conjunction repeated), or the Epidiorthosis (the
correction of an expression). Nevertheless, in dealing with a prose
composition, the weight of the arguments, the lucidity with which the
facts are set forth, and the force with which the conclusions are driven
home, rank, or should rank, in the mind of the reader higher than any
feelings which are derived from the music of the words or the skilful
order in which they are arranged. Moreover, in prose more frequently
than in verse, it is the beauty of the idea expressed which attracts
rather than the language in which it is clothed. Thus, for instance,
there can be no difficulty in translating the celebrated metaphor of
Pericles[28] that "the loss of the youth of the city was as if the
spring was taken out of the year," because the beauty of the idea can in
no way suffer by presenting it in English, French, or German rather than
in the original Greek. Again, to quote another instance from Latin, the
fine epitaph to St. Ovinus in Ely Cathedral: "Lucem tuam Ovino da, Deus,
et requiem," loses nothing of its terse pathos by being rendered into