[A] translation is a work not only inferior to the original by the whole difference of talent between the first composer and his translator: it is even inferior to the best which the translator could do under more inspiring circumstances. No man can do his best with a subject which does not penetrate him: no man can be penetrated by a subject which he does not conceive independently.A related post: Get Off My Lawn
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
22 September 2014
Inferior to the Original
Matthew Arnold, preface to "Merope," The Poems of Matthew Arnold (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), pp. 284-285: