know of no translation of a Greek tragedian deserving of unqualified
praise. But even supposing the translation as perfect as possible, and
deviating very slightly from the original, the reader who is unacquainted
with the other works of the Greeks, will be perpetually disturbed by the
foreign nature of the subject, by national peculiarities and numerous
allusions (which cannot be understood without some scholarship), and thus
unable to comprehend particular parts, he will be prevented from forming a
clear idea of the whole. So long as we have to struggle with difficulties
it is impossible to have any true enjoyment of a work of art. To feel the
ancients as we ought, we must have become in some degree one of
themselves, and breathed as it were the Grecian air.

What is the best means of becoming imbued with the spirit of the Greeks,
without a knowledge of their language? I answer without hesitation,--the
study of the antique; and if this is not always possible through the
originals, yet, by means of casts, it is to a certain extent within the
power of every man. These models of the human form require no
interpretation; their elevated character is imperishable, and will always
be recognized through all vicissitudes of time, and in every region under
heaven, wherever there exists a noble race of men akin to the Grecian (as
the European undoubtedly is), and wherever the unkindness of nature has
not degraded the human features too much below the pure standard, and, by
habituating them to their own deformity, rendered them insensible to
genuine corporeal beauty. Respecting the inimitable perfection of the
antique in its few remains of a first-rate character, there is but one
voice throughout the whole of civilized Europe; and if ever their merit
was called in question, it was in times when the modern arts of design had
sunk to the lowest depths of mannerism. Not only all intelligent artists,
but all men of any degree of taste, bow with enthusiastic adoration before
the masterly productions of ancient sculpture.