This question of degree, however, occasions the difficulty; and though no one pretends to aim at an absolutely literal version of a foreign writer in poetry, yet there are two classes who entertain opinions so distinct in regard to the strictness of adherence to the original required from a translator, that they may fairly enough be characterised as the 'literal,' and (according to their own nomenclature) the spirited' or liberal translators. This last epithet, however, we must observe, is in many cases far too favourable;– 'license they mean when they cry liberty;'-and their versions might with justice be characterised as loose rather than spirited.

In England, the prevailing practice and opinion has long been in favour of the liberal system of translation. Our early versions of classic and foreign writers were no doubt framed, professedly at least, on the principle of literal translation; and in this style Fairfax's translation of the Jerusalem was a masterpiece. But a revolution was effected in English translation by the great talent of Dryden. Dryden had undoubtedly many of the highest requisites of a translator; he was a competent if not a profound scholar, and a consummate master of all the resources of the language in which he wrote;-even to the minutest and most secret technicalities of versification: he had a vigorous and masculine taste, which taught him to look to the effect of the whole rather than the parts, and to despise the idea of interweaving with the original texture mere additions and ornaments of his own. But the very fertility and originality of his own mind rendered it difficult for him to devote to his compositions of this kind that patient attention which is required to convey the exact meaning of the original, in words at once idiomatically English, and yet close and literal;-to make his versions, in short, properly translations, as distinguished from paraphrases. Undoubtedly at times he may even improve upon his original, as in his noble version of the line Vertitur interea coelum et ruit oceano nox.'

'Mean-time the rapid heavens rolled down the light,
And on the shaded ocean rushed the night.'

But he often adopts a merely analogous turn or idea where a little more pains would have enabled him to represent the original in English words with spirit and fidelity; and he very often falls into that error, so common in what is called spirited translation, of endeavouring to avoid stiffness, and to give an air of vivacity and originality to his version by the employment of phrases, and allusions, and technical expressions connected with modern times and manners, which give to his otherwise noble and beautiful poem something of that slang air which appears so

whimsical in Echard's Terence. What can be more absurd, for instance, than the translation of the lines

'Læva tibi tellus, et longo læva petantur

Æquora circuitu; dextrum fuge littus et undas.

'Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea,

Veer starboard, sea, and land,’—

A counsel which, as Sir Walter Scott justly observes, would probably have been unintelligible not only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.

The questionable example set by Dryden was imitated by Pope, and unfortunately with a still greater deviation from the true principles of translation. From the defect of introducing mere modern phrases into his translation, and thus unpleasingly suggesting the recollections of Wapping in the midst of a voyage in the Mediterranean, Pope was, no doubt, free; but he fell into the more cardinal error of translating on the systematic principle of improving his original,-softening its rudenesses, and hiding its supposed baldness with additional epithets and imagery. For this most vicious system, we own, we have no toleration. If a work is deserving of translation, it deserves to be translated as it is-with all its peculiarities, however little these may be in harmony with modern notions. It ought to be a copy of the original; not, indeed, a Chinese copy, where every hair of the head or eyebrow may be counted in the portrait, but in which nothing is added or taken away, and the characteristic expression preserved, -whether that happens to correspond with the line of beauty or the reverse.

We believe the popularity of Pope's Iliad and Odyssey to have produced the most pernicious effect upon our English taste as to translation. In fact, with the exception of Cowper's version of the Iliad, in blank verse, which, with considerable defects of style, is yet a work conceived, and in general executed, in a right spirit, we can mention no poetical English translation of any great classic or foreign work, deserving of the name, between the time of Pope and the appearance of Mr Carey's translation of Dante. Mr Carey's translation was close and harmonious; its only defect is, that the peculiarities of Dante's manner and versification often evaporate in the Miltonic movement of the blank verse; which the translator (despairing of being able to imitate the intricacies of the terza rima in English) chose to adopt. Since that time, the example thus set of a return to the literal rather than the paraphrastic style of translation has been frequently imitated, and with success. We still prefer, we must admit, Fairfax's version of the Jerusalem to any of the numerous translations of

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that poem to which the present century has given birth; but those of Hunt and Wiffen certainly present themselves in very favourable contrast with the mawkish and miserable version of Hoole. Mr Stewart Rose's version of the Orlando is remarkably spirited and faithful; and, we really believe, accomplishes as much for Ariosto as we have any reason to think can be done for his delightful verses in the somewhat unbending language to which they have been transferred.

The wide field opened by German literature has of late attracted not a few English translators to that quarter; and we are rather inclined to think that the sound and strict views which preyail in Germany with regard to translation, and the wonderful success with which these views have been carried into execution, and illustrated in their literature, have had a most beneficial effect in correcting the tendency to that loose and merely imitative style which the success of Pope's translations had sanctioned and rendered popular; and of recalling us to a taste for that severer style which distinguished the earlier period of our literature, and which we believe to be the only style of translation which can possess any permanent value or interest. The principle of every German translator of any eminence has long been, to sink himself entirely in his original; to look upon himself as the mere sworn interpreter of a foreigner's meaning, in his own language; to permit himself no liberties either of addition or retrenchment; never to use a mere paraphrase, where without violence or obscurity the meaning of the original can be literally rendered; and to copy not merely the meaning of the passage translated, but, as far as possible, the movement of the versification, the arrangement of the rhymes, the fall of the cadences of the original. The defects of German translations are almost always on the side of ruggedness or stiffness, from too close an adherence to the originals; but no one who has not some acquaintance with German literature can form the least idea of the perfection-both in point of fidelity, and of spirit and freedom, with which some of the German versions, both from our own writers, and from those of the Continent, have been executed. We have more than once alluded to the admirable translation of Shakspeare by William Schlegel,-a translation in listening to which in a German theatre-the English traveller who has a competent knowledge of the language might almost believe that he heard our great dramatist's own accent; and in which not merely the general characteristics of Shakspeare's manner are caught, but the diversities of tone which distinguish particular plays. But the singular circumstance is, that new translations of Shakspeare still from time to time appear; and excellent as Schlegel's version

Is, there are some of them to which (in the translation of particular plays at least) we should almost be disposed to award the preference. We have lately perused, in particular, with the highest pleasure, the opening volume of the translation by Philip Kauffman, which is not inferior to that of Schlegel, either in fidelity or poetical beauty, and yet has a quite original and independent character.

There are, however, so many analogies between the German and the English, both in language and character, that the success of these versions of our great dramatist may be considered less remarkable, than the extraordinary skill and mastery with which the Germans have seized and conveyed into their own language the spirit of the poets of the Peninsula. One is not surprised to find, as in Jauregui's Spanish translation of Tasso's Aminta, a version which is almost literal, and where sometimes the words in both languages correspond through whole lines. The resemblances between the two Romanic languages, and the many features of national character common to both, particularly at an earlier period, render this by no means so remarkable a tour de force as it might at first sight appear to be. But to embody in Teutonic accents the words of the warm south; to throw into the vague and pensive language of Germany the fire and glow of Spanish clime, is a task which, but for the remarkable translations from the dramas of Lope de Vega, Moreto, and Calderon, of which German literature can boast, we should beforehand have pronounced to be impossible. In this department also, as in that of the English drama, Schlegel may be said to have led the way; but he has found fit successors and worthy rivals in Malsburg and Gries, both of whom have executed versions of the best of Calderon's plays in a style which, to our minds, comes near to perfection. Not merely is the translation executed line for line, but the strange peculiarities of the versification are imitated,-rambling from the full rhyme or consonante into the asonante, or imperfect rhyme, which when once commenced, must be continued, according to the laws of the Spanish stage, throughout the scene, though consisting, as these frequently do, of many hundred lines; then enlarging into the full stream of harmonious octavas, or terminating (as frequently the soliloquies do) in the intricate melody of the sonnet:-all these, with the many other metres of which the Spanish drama admits, are invariably rendered by corresponding measures in German. It may be safely affirmed, that to render back a single play of Calderon in this style of perfect reflection, is a task involving an amount of patient toil (apart altogether from the poetical feeling

and delicacy of perception which it implies, and the previous philological acquisitions which it presupposes) at which most of our English translators would stand aghast.

We are not yet able to boast that we have repaid our obligations to our German neighbours by any versions from their literature, of corresponding excellence, though in numbers at least we are not deficient. We have actually ceased to count the translations of Faust; yet it may be doubted whether even by a union of all that is good in each, we should obtain a result which would satisfy the idea of a good translation. No poetical translation from the German has in fact ever become properly a part of English literature, except, The Wallenstein,' as translated by Coleridge; and admirable as that translation is on the whole, it is deformed by blemishes, inequalities, and occasionally absolute mistakes or perversions of meaning, which a very slight degree of additional labour would have removed. A still more serious charge against his translation is the singular omission of some of the most remarkable passages of the original. Coleridge's play, it is known, was translated from a manuscript copy, and considerable alterations were made by Schiller on the drama, before publication. This may account for some discrepancies between the original and the translation, but it will not account for Coleridge's omission of some very striking passages in the scene between Wallenstein and Max Piccolomini ;* in the third Act, of Wallenstein's death; nor for the still more singular curtailment of the beautiful monologue of Thekla, in the twelfth scene of the fourth Act, when, after bearing up with a courage worthy of Wallenstein's daughter during the narrative of her lover's death, she resolves to leave all behind her, and to breathe her last beside his laurel-covered coffin in the cloister of St Catharine's. On this passage Coleridge remarks, in a note. The soliloquy of Thekla, consists in the original of six-and-twenty ' lines, twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I 'thought it prudent to abridge it.' He has abridged it with a vengeance. Of the last twenty lines, the only traces that appear in Coleridge's version, are these-

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* Scene XVIII. Act III.