the scholar, but also to the unlearned reader. It should read as an
original work, and should also be the most faithful transcript which
can be made of the language from which the translation is taken,
consistently with the first requirement of all, that it be English.
The excellence of a translation will consist, not merely in the
faithful rendering of words, or in the composition of a sentence only,
or yet of a single paragraph, but in the colour and style of the whole
work."

These tests may be safely applied to the work of Mr. Dakyns. An
accomplished Greek scholar, for many years a careful and sympathetic
student of Xenophon, and possessing a rare mastery of English idiom,
he was unusually well equipped for the work of a translator. And his
version will, as I venture to think, be found to satisfy those
requirements of an effective translation which Professor Jowett laid
down. It is faithful to the tone and spirit of the original, and it
has the literary quality of a good piece of original English writing.
For these and other reasons it should prove attractive and interesting
reading for the average Englishman.

Xenophon, it must be admitted, is not, like Plato, Thucydides, or
Demosthenes, one of the greatest of Greek writers, but there are
several considerations which should commend him to the general reader.
He is more representative of the type of man whom the ordinary
Englishman specially admires and respects, than any other of the Greek
authors usually read.

An Athenian of good social position, endowed with a gift of eloquence
and of literary style, a pupil of Socrates, a distinguished soldier,
an historian, an essayist, a sportsman, and a lover of the country, he