Ac dicta factaque eius quanto
solutiora et quandam sui negligentiam praeferentia, tanto gratius in
speciem simplicitatis accipiebantur." So far, this describes Proust
also, and the similarity extends to their work. In connexion with
Proust's, one of our youngest critics, your contemporary rather than
mine, raises the question: "how this titanic fragment can be trundled
from age to age," and answers himself with: "_A la Recherche du Temps
Perdu_ is not one of those things which are replaced, like the novel
of the moment, but exactly what part of it is most likely to be saved
the present cannot decide." The better answer is, surely, that, of
Proust as of his fore-runner Petronius, people will keep the things
they like best. There are many pages now in Proust that are
boring--but even now a selected edition for schools and colleges is (I
am told) in the press: there is nothing in the surviving _Satyricon_
that need bring a yawn to the lips of adolescence.
If, as I may suppose, you have planned to translate some at least of
the Greek and Latin classics, you can choose no more handy model than
Mr. Burnaby. He is later, it is true, than the richest and best
examples, but so much the nearer to you in speech. He is not always
scholarly--you can safely leave scholarship to others--but he uses an
excellent colloquial English with a common sense in interpretation
which carries him over the many gaps in the story without any palpable
difference in texture.
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