MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON. BOMBAY • CALCUTTA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO PREFACE THE rough draft of the following translation was made many years ago both as a labour of love and as an aid to the composition of the narrative of my Caesar's Conquest of Gaul; but the publication was deferred, partly because I had other work to do, partly in order that I might be able to elucidate not only the chapters which treat of the Gallic War, but also those which are devoted to the invasions of Britain. A translator cannot but fail unless he is in sympathy with his author; and, however gifted he may be, I doubt whether he can do justice to more than one writer, for his own style will remain the same. Jowett's Thucydides is a great intellectual achievement and a noble example of English prose; but, compared with his Plato, it is a failure. Moreover, even though each age may demand its own version of a classic, there is a time for translation as for everything else. The Authorized Version of the Bible was made at the right time supposing that the work had been deferred until, say, the latter part of the nineteenth century, would not the gain in scholarship have been bought too dear? What would have become of David's lamentation on the death of Absalom ? What should we have had instead of "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace"? A much later stage in the development of our language would have fitted Caesar, but I fear that it has gone: would not Swift, our great master of unadorned prose, or even Southey, less powerful, but unsurpassed in clearness and taste, have caught his spirit? The sympathetic translator, while avoiding the error of imitating style, will strive, after he has completely seized the author's meaning, to forget that he is a translator, and simply to express in his own tongue every detail, every nuance of thought which the author expressed in his. Of course he will be making an attempt which, at the best, can only approximate to success; he will be forced again and again to compromise; but, given the needful ability, his work will go far to suggest, without the least sacrifice of accuracy, the effect of the original. I hope that even this attempt, with all its defects, will here and there reflect, however faintly, the dignity, the terseness, the directness, the lucidity, the restraint, the masculine energy of Caesar's style. To reflect its occasional roughness and carelessness is less difficult. The effect of the Commentaries was not |