Grotius makes the
like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the single clauses
of which it is composed were already in use, in the time of Christ,
in the rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of gold. The nervous
language of the Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts, and
the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the
contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived
in the countries where these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch
gets its excellence by being translation on translation. There never
was a time when there was none. All the truly diomatic and national
phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out and thrown
away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with
the originals of these books. The world takes liberties with
world-books. Vedas, Aesop's Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad,
Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In
the composition of such works, the time thinks, the market thinks, the
mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for
us.
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