If the feat is possible at all, it requires a great and conscious effort, and the attainment of a state of mind which can only be preserved by constant attention.

The translator has to wear a mask which is always in danger of being rudely shattered.
Such an intellectual feat is likely to produce what, in the most obvious sense, one would call highly artificial work.

Modern classicism must be fine-spun, and smell rather of the hothouse than the open air.
Undoubtedly some exquisite literary achievements have been accomplished in this spirit; but they are, after all, calculated for the small circle of cultivated minds, and many of their merits can be appreciated only by professors qualified by special training.

Most frequently we can hope for pretty playthings, or, at best, for skilful restorations which show learning and taste far more distinctly than a glowing imagination.

But even if an original poet can breathe some spirit into classical poems, the poor translator, with the dread of philologists and antiquarians in the back-ground, is so fettered that free movement becomes almost impossible.