This
practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches
of his own noble English tongue. It will give a habitual
nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase
will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks.
The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator
will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the
great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us
as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its
excellence.
The value of translation is very different from that of original
written composition. Cicero says:
"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."
Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you
get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly
you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an
injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct
or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states
his preference for translation. He says that at first he used
to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning
into his head, and then write it again.
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