ALFIEHI AND HIS ASSISTANT. 



3C7 



trayed by Henry VIII., tried, and ! sword I will make a fortune cuttin 



condemned to be first strangled 

 and then burnt at the stake. His 

 last words were, " Lord, open, the 

 King of England's eyes !" 



The first translation of the Scrip- 

 tures was, however, made by Wick- 

 liife, about the year 1382, or nearly 

 a century and a half before the 

 time of Tyndale. 



ELIOT AND THE INDIANS. 



While Eliot was engaged in trans- 

 lating the Bible into the Indian 

 language, he came to this passage : 

 " The mother of Sisera looked out 

 at the window, and cried through 

 the lattice," &c. Not knowing an 

 Indian word to signify lattice, he 

 applied to several of the natives, 

 and endeavoured to describe to 

 them what a lattice resembled. 

 He described it as a framework, 

 netting, wicker, or whatever else 

 occurred to him as illustrative ; 

 when they gave him a long, barba- 

 rous, and unpronounceable word, 

 as are many of the words in their 

 language. 



Some years after, when he had 

 learned their dialect more cor- 

 rectly, he is said to have laughed 

 outrighty upon finding that the In- 

 dians had given him the true term 

 for eel-pot" The mother of Sisera 

 looked out at the window, and cried 

 through the eel-pot" 



FRENCH BLUNDERS. 



The French make awful havoc of 

 John Bull's English, in their at- 

 tempts at translation. They seem 

 never to reflect that English \ 

 have often many and remote signi- 

 fications. Voltaire translated some 

 of Slwkspeare's plays. Shakspeare 

 makes one of his characters re- 

 nounce all claim to a doubtful in- 

 heritance, with an avowed resolu- 

 tion to carve for himself a fortune 

 with his sword. Voltaire put it 

 in Frcnch,which re-translated reads 

 " What care I for lands ? With my 



meat." Another, displeased with 

 such blunders, undertook a more 

 :orrect translation of the great bard. 

 Coming to the following passage 



" Even such, a man, so faint, so spirit- 

 less, 

 So dull, to dead in look, so woe-bcgone," 



he translated the Italicized words, 

 to read, " So grief be off with you." 



"PARADISE LOST." 



In the French translation of Pa- 

 radise Lost, " Hail, horrors, hail ! " 

 is rendered thus : " Comment vous 

 portez vous, les horreurs, comment 

 vous portez vous!" that is, "How 

 d'ye do, horrors, how d'ye do?" 



EXEGI MONUMENTUM. 



At an examination of the senior 

 class in a college, a young man con- 

 strued the following line in Horace, 

 " Exegi monumentum cere peren- 

 nius" (which is, in English, " I have 

 finished a monument more lasting 

 than brass)," thus : " / have eaten a> 

 monument harder than brass." One 

 of the tritstees immediately replied, 

 " Well, sir, I think you had better 

 sit down and digest it." 



ALFIERI AND HIS ASSISTANT. 



Alfieri employed a respectable 

 young man at Florence to assist 

 him in his Greek translations; and 

 the manner in which that instruc- 

 tion was received was not a little 

 eccentric. The latter slowly read 

 aloud, and translated, while Allieri, 

 with his pencil and his tablets in 

 his hand, \valked about the 

 and ]uii down his version. 'J hia 

 ho did without speaking a word ; 

 and when he found his preceptor 

 reciting too quickly, or when he 

 did not understand the passage, he 

 held up his pencil. 



This was Uie signal for repetition, 

 and the last sentence was slowly 

 recited, or the reading was stopped, 

 until a tap from tli , poet's pencil 



