MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



Goethe says, " I honour both rhythm and rhyme, by which poetry first 

 becomes poetry : but the properly deep and radically operative the truy 

 developing and quickening, is that which remains of the poet, when he is 

 translated into prose. The inward substance then remains in its purity and 

 fullness ; which, when it is absent, a dazzling exterior often deludes us with 

 the semblance of, and, when it is present, conceals." Now, it is pretty clear 

 to us, that this is not so much a vindication of prose translations of poetry, as 

 an attack on poetry itself; and if it be not so, it is merely begging the ques- 

 tion. For, although true enough it is, that " a dazzling exterior often 

 deludes us with the semblance of a substance which is not ;" and again, that 

 it often " conceals (as in Shelley's poetry, for instance) a substance which 

 is ;" yet, that is just as strong a reason why the native poet should have 

 composed in prose, as it is sound argument to prove that the foreign trans- 

 lator should not render his original in verse. The difficulty of rendering 

 poetry into poetry is another question. 



We maintain that the idea of giving us a literal prose translation of 

 a foreign poem, with any other [design than that of aiding us in our 

 study of the language, or with the view of presenting us with a perfect 

 picture of the original, is manifestly absurd. In the first place, an approxi- 

 mation to the form is not attempted ; in the second, the words that constitute 

 poetry are not, for the most part, employed literally. It is not even an 

 imitation. To be literal is not to be just ; to be prosaic is not the thing. 

 Poetry is not read in the letter, but in the spirit. For instance, what would a 

 literal prose translation of the Apollo Belvedere be like ? It would not be a 

 cast, for in that case the form is preserved. It must be, at best, a certain 

 quantity of English marble of exactly the same weight as that of the statue 

 " which enchants the world." In like manner, conceive a literal prose 

 translation of a bottle of Champagne. Not a gooseberry is put into requisi- 

 tion. We are not to have the sparkling brilliancy, the colour, nay, not even 

 the form in which that liquid paradise is conjured before us. We are to 

 enjoy what Goethe calls " the properly deep and radically operative." 

 Accept, then, a quart of beer ; Whitbread's entire, or Barclay's double 

 stout. How a man like the translator (no common man we are willing and 

 proud to acknowledge) could have supposed that he was doing a service to 

 literature by his translation, we are at a loss to conceive. His work is 

 invaluable to the German student, we freely grant, but it is nothing more. 

 This mistake on the part of our translator is the more remarkable, that he 

 appears perfectly sensible of the vast merit of Mr. Coleridge's translation of 

 Schiller's " Wallenstein," and is conscious that no small portion of its merit 

 is attributable to the exquisite felicity of its versification and the harmony of 

 its numbers. He must know better, perhaps, than we can inform him, that 

 all great poets, to be properly understood and appreciated, demand the exer- 

 cise of a corresponding power in these particulars, from the translator. It 

 is true, that a great majority, even of the readers of poetry, are utterly 

 insensible to these graces ; and that for the gratification of their ears, the 

 Night Thoughts are equally effective with the Paradise Lost ; but this fact 

 by no means lessens the obligation of the translator to fulfil the essential 

 part of his duty towards those who really feel, as well as apprehend, poetry. 

 We beseech him to imagine for a moment a literal prose translation into 

 German, of Comus, Lycidas, or the Midsummer Night's Dream. 



The present translator, in his preface, has called Lord Gower pretty strictly 

 to account for the many errors, both of commission and omission, to be 

 found in his translation, and it appears evident enough, that the noble lord 

 was not, at the time he undertook his arduous task, sufficiently well 

 acquainted with the German. It is also equally clear that the former is a 

 perfect master of that language ; and that a consciousness of superiority in 

 this respect sometimes lends a tone to his strictures which we should have 

 been well pleased not to have discovered. Upon the whole, however, it is 



