Between opinions so diametrically opposed, no compromise seems possible, and yet I feel convinced that when we come to discuss any controverted passage, Professor von Roth will have to adopt exactly the same principles of translation which I have followed.

On one point, however, I am quite willing to agree with my adversaries, namely, that a metrical rendering would convey a truer idea of the hymns of the Vedic Rishis than a prose rendering. When I had to translate Vedic hymns into German, I have generally, if not always, endeavoured to clothe them in a metrical form. In English I feel unable to do so, but I have no doubt that future scholars will find it possible to add rhythm and even rhyme, after the true meaning of the ancient verses has once been determined. But even with regard to my German metrical translations, I feel in honesty bound to confess that a metrical translation is often an excuse only for an inaccurate translation. If we could make sure of a translator like Rückert, even the impossible might become possible. But as there are few, if any, who, like him, are great alike as scholars and poets, the mere scholar seems to me to be doing his duty better when he produces a correct translation, though in

prose, than if he has to make any concessions, however small, on the side of faithfulness in favour of rhythm and rhyme.

If a metrical, an intelligible, and, generally speaking, a beautiful translation were all we wanted, why should so many scholars clamour for a new translation, when they have that by Grassmann? It rests on Böhtlingk and Roth's Dictionary, or represents, as we are told, even a more advanced stage of Vedic scholarship. Yet after the well-known contributors of certain critical Journals had repeated ever so many times all that could possibly be said in praise of Grassmann's, and in dispraise of Ludwig's translation, what is the result? Grassmann's metrical translation, the merits of which, considering the time when it was published, I have never been loth to acknowledge, is hardly ever appealed to, while Ludwig's prose rendering, with all its drawbacks, is universally considered as the only scholarlike translation of the Rig-veda now in existence. Time tries the troth in everything.