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body possessed of a certain individual bigness, somebody who himself has something to say, something original with which to replace that delicate and volatile essence that is inevitably lost in the process of transference. Of all the arts and crafts, translation is most closely akin to acting. The translator, like the actor, must temporarily sink his personality in that of another; he must speak not his own thoughts, but the lines that are set down for him. But every translator, like every actor, has a right to his own conception of his part; he can, so to speak, supply his own gestures, his own stage business. And, if he is an actor devoid of originality, if he has no ideas to supply, no gestures of his own, no power to make his personality tell upon the stage, then at best his must be a sorry performance. Edgar Allan Poe is not the only writer who has formulated the following theory