782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sition, but it is far from being perfect. Let him read a chapter of 

 French or German, learned in this way, and then read the same 

 amount of English on the same subject, and, as nearly as may 

 be, in the same style and he will find a great difference in the 

 time required. Let him read a plain narrative in the foreign 

 tongue, and he will find that weariness importunes him to stop 

 much sooner than it would if he were reading a good English 

 translation. 



Nor is this all. The meaning has been more or less misty 

 throughout, as can readily be proved by taking the individual 

 words out of connection and finding that many fail to call up any 

 definite idea. Arid, although the ideas have appeared during the 

 reading, they have been faint instead of vivid, because the asso- 

 ciation impulses have been sluggish and uncertain instead of 

 prompt and true. Moreover, the subtile correspondences between 

 sense and sound, which are allied to the unexplained power of 

 music, together with almost all that constitutes the charm and 

 effectiveness of style, have been lost in a struggle to get the bare 

 meaning no, not even the bare meaning, but a bare skeleton of 

 the meaning. If this is a serious loss in reading plain narrative 

 or scientific exposition, how fatal is it to the full enjoyment of 

 poetical or rhetorical writings, where every word has been chosen 

 with some reference to its sound ! The readers of Hamerton's 

 wise and charming essays on The Intellectual Life will remember 

 how Tennyson's Claribel was read by a thoroughly cultivated 

 Frenchman, who had long studied English and read abundantly 

 of the literature, but had never become really familiar with Eng- 

 lish sounds : 



"At ev ze bittle bommess 



Azvart ze zeeket Ion 

 At none ze veeld be ommess 



Aboot ze most edston 

 At meedneeg ze mon commess 



An lokez doon alon 

 Ere songg ze lintveet svelless 

 Ze clirvoiced mavi dvelless 



Ze fledgling srost lispess 

 Ze slomb:-oos vav ootvelless 



Ze babblang ronnel creespess 

 Ze ollov grot replee-ess 

 Vere Claribel lovlee-ess." 



Ought we to be content to read the French and German or the 

 Greek and Latin poets in any such fashion ? 



But even such absurdly incorrect sounds serve some purpose, 

 for they keep the association currents in their natural course 

 through the auditory center. They are like a debased and muti- 

 lated currency, whose low and uncertain value discourages and 



