dence of the moral, metaphysical, or theological views of the author,—which, as already intimated, has exercised a great part of its widely-spread influence by qualities that have no more necessary connection with verse than prose, it is surely best to sacrifice metre.

The dilemma was fairly stated in the Edinburgh Review :-"When people are once aware how very rare a thing a successful translation must ever be, from the nature of the case, they will be more disposed to admit the prudence of lessening the obstacles as much as possible. There will be no lack of difficulties to surmount, (of that the French school may rest assured,) after removing out of the way every restraint that can be spared. If the very measure of the original can be preserved, the delight with which our ear and imagination recognize its return, add incomparably to the triumph and the effect. Many persons, however, are prepared to dispense with this condition, who, nevertheless, shrink from extending their indulgence to a dispensation from metre altogether. But it is really the same question which a writer and his critics have to determine in both cases. If the difficulty of the particular metre, or of metre generally, can be mastered without sacrificing more on their account than they are worth, they ought undoubtedly to be preserved. What, however, in any given case, is a nation to do, until a genius shall arise who can reconcile contradictions which are too strong for ordinary hands? In the meanwhile, is it not the wisest course to make

the most favourable bargain that the nature of the dilemma offers ? Unless the public is absurd enough to abjure the literature of all languages which are not universally understood, there can be no member of the public who is not dependent, in one case or another, upon translations. The necessity of this refuge for the destitute being once admitted, it follows that they are entitled to the best that can be got. What is the best? Surely that in which the least of the original is lost-least lost in those qualities which are the most important. The native air and real meaning of a work are more essential qualities than the charm of its numbers, or the embellishments and the passion of its poetic style. The first is the metal and the weight; the second is the plating and the fashion.”—No. 115, pp. 112, 113.*

A writer in the Examiner speaks still more decidedly, and claims for prose translators a distinction which we should hardly have ventured to claim for ourselves :

"Every one knows the magnificent translation left by Shelley of the Prologue in Heaven and the MayDay Night-Scene; fragments which, of themselves, have won many a young mind to the arduous study of the German language. By the industry of the present translator we learn, that many passages we have been in the habit of admiring in those translations are not

*This article has been translated into French and republished in the Révue Britannique.

only perversions but direct contradictions of the corresponding passages in Goethe, and that Shelley wanted a few months' study of German to make him equal to a translation of Faust. We do not think the translator need have troubled himself with any dissertation of this sort, in order to justify the design of a prose translation of Faust. My main object,' he says, 'in these criticisms is to shake, if not remove, the very disadvantageous impressions that have hitherto been prevalent of Faust, and keep public opinion suspended concerning Goethe, till some poet of congenial spirit shall arise capable of doing justice to this the most splendid and interesting of his works.' Why not go further than this, and contend that a mind strongly imbued with poetical feeling, and rightly covetous of an acquaintance with the poet, will not rest satisfied with anything short of as exact a rendering of his words as the different phraseology of the two languages will admit? In such a translation, be it never so well executed, we know that much is lost; but nothing that is lost can be enjoyed without studying the language. No poetical translation can give the rhythm and rhyme of the original; it can only substitute the rhythm and rhyme of the translator; and for the sake of this substitute we must renounce some portion of the original sense, and nearly all the expressions; whereas, by a prose translation, we can arrive perfectly at the thoughts, and very nearly at the words of the original. When these (as in Faust) have sprung

from the brain of an inspired master, have been brooded over, matured, and elaborated during a great portion of a life, and finally issue forth, bearing upon them the stamp of a creative authority, to what are we to sacrifice any part or particle which can be made to survive in a literal transcript or paraphrase of prose ? To the pleasure of being simultaneously tickled by the metres of a native poetaster, which, if capable of giving any enjoyment at all, will find themselves better wedded to his own original thoughts, and which, were they the happiest and most musical in the world, can never ring out natural and concording music to aspirations born in another time, clime, and place, nor harmonize, like the original metres, with that tone of mind to which they should form a kind of orchestral accompaniment in its creative mood. The sacred and mysterious union of thought with verse, twin born and immortally wedded from the moment of their common birth, can never be understood by those who desire verse translations of good poetry.

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Nevertheless, the translator of poetry must be a poet, although he translates in prose. Such only can have sufficient feeling to taste the original to the core, combined with a sufficient mastery of language to give burning word for burning word, idiom for idiom, and the form of expression which comes most home in English for that which comes most home in German. Such a task, in fact, is one requiring a great proportion of fire, as well as delicacy and judgment, and by

no means what Dr. Johnson thought it—a task to be executed by any one who can read and understand the original."-March 24, 1833.

Another influential journal followed nearly the same line of argument:—

"To the combination-unhappily too rare-of genius and energy, few things are impossible; and we further venture to assert that, of the two undertakings, such a prose translation as the present is far more difficult than a metrical version could be, always supposing the possession of an eminent power of language, and a pure poetical taste, to be equal in the one attempt and the other."-The Athenæum for April 27th, 1833.

Some critics have compared a prose translation to a skeleton. The fairer comparison would be to an engraving from a picture; where we lose, indeed, the charm of colouring, but the design, invention, composition, expression, nay the very light and shade of the original, may be preserved.

It may not be deemed wholly inapplicable to remark, that unrhymed verse had to encounter, on its introduction in most countries, a much larger share of prejudiced opposition than prose translations of poetry seem destined to encounter among us. Milton found it necessary to enter on an elaborate and, it must be owned, rather dogmatical defence; and so strong was the feeling against Klopstock, that Goethe's father refused to admit the Messiah into his house on