equivalent to each other, though the epithets by which the objects are characterized, and the qualities ascribed to them, may differ. But the moment we step out of the domain of the senses, and begin to apply to acts and objects belonging to the world of mind, names derived from the world of matter, we diverge from each other, and every nation forms a vocabulary suited to its own moral and intellectual character, its circumstances, habits, tastes and opinions, but not precisely adapted to the expression of the conceptions, emotions and passions of any other people. Hence the difficulty of making translations, which are absolutely faithful re-productions of their originals.

There are at the present day conflicting influences in operation, which tend, on the one hand, to individualize the languages of Europe, and make them more idiomatic and discordant in structure, and on the other, to harmonize and assimilate them to each other; and the same influences are acting respectively as hindrances and as helps to the making of translations between them. To the latter, the helps, belong the increased facilities of communication, the general study, in every country, of the literature of several others, the influence of two or three cosmopolite languages, like English, French and German, the extended cultivation of philological science, and the universality of the practice of translation, which has compelled scholars to find or fashion, in their own speech, equivalents, or at least exponents, of the idioms of all others. The Caledonian, indeed, does not believe that the novels of Scott can be adequately translated into any foreign tongue; the German affirms that Richter is to be understood and enjoyed only in the original Teutonic; and the American doubts whether the Libyan English of Uncle

Tom's Cabin can be rendered into any other dialect. Never theless, each of these has had numerous translations, whose success proves that they are tolerable representatives, if not exact counterparts, of their originals.

The opposing influence is the spirit of nationality and linguistic purism, which has revived so many dying, and purged and renovated so many decayed and corrupted European languages within the last century. In almost every Continental country, foreign words and phrases have been expelled, and their places supplied by native derivatives, compounds and constructions; obsolete words have been restored, vague and anomalous orthography conformed to etymology or to orthoepy, and thus both the outward dress and the essential spirit of each made more national and idiomatic, and, therefore, to some extent, more diverse from all others, and less capable of being adequately rendered into any of them. At the same time, this purification and reconstruction of languages has brought them all back to certain principles of universal or rather of Indo-European grammar common to all, and in each, the revival of forgotten words and idioms has so enlarged their vocabulary, and increased their compass and flexibility, that it is easier to find equivalents for foreign terms and constructions, than when their stock of words and variety of expression was more restricted. Upon the whole, then, better translations are now practicable than at any former period of literary history; and every popular author may hope to see his works repeated in many forms, none of which he need be ashamed to own as his offspring.

The question between the relative merits of free and literal translation, between paraphrastic liberty and servile fidelity, has been long discussed; but, like many other abstract questions, it depends for its answer upon ever-varying condi

tions, and there is no general formula to express its solution. The commentators on the famous Horatian precept:

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus

Interpres,

might have saved themselves some trouble, if they had observed, what is plain from the context, that Horace was not speaking of translations åt all, but of theatrical adaptation, dramatization, as we now say, of epic or historical subjects, which had been already treated in narrative prose or verse by other writers; and, therefore, the opinion of the great Roman poet, were it otherwise binding, could not be cited as an authority on this question.* The rule of Hooker: "Of

*Much of modern opinion on ancient literature and philosophy is founded on the criticism of familiar quotations, the examination of detached passages, which, standing alone, appear to contain a very different meaning from that which they express when taken in connection with their context, or the circumstances under which they were uttered. An example of this is the sentiment in Cicero's Tusculan Questions, I. 17, so often quoted and moralized upon as an instance of excessive and almost idolatrous reverence for a majestic and imposing human intellect: “Errare mehercule malo cum Platone quam cum istis vera sentire." Even in the Guesses at Truth, second series, third edition, p. 235, this passage is treated as the expression of a humiliating general submission to the authority of Plato, and Cicero is in part exonerated from the disgrace of so unworthy a sentiment, by the remark that he puts the words into the mouth of "the young man whom he is instructing," though it is admitted that he approved and adopted them. But it is plain to any one who will take the trouble to read enough of the dialogue in which this passage occurs, to understand the bearing of it upon the subject under discussion, that the “young man" expressed, and Cicero approved, no such deference to the authority of the Greek philosopher as is, upon the strength of this quotation, so often imputed to Cicero himself. The immediate point then under discussion was the question of the immortality of the soul, which was maintained by Plato, but denied by the Epicureans, and it is, evidently, solely with reference to the conclusions of Plato on this one point, not the weight of his authority, that the disciple and his master agree in preferring to share with him the beneficent possible error of eternal life, rather than the fearful and pernicious truth, if it were a truth, of final annihilation, with his opponents.

And how comes it, that among the thousands of rhetorical critics, who, since

translations, the better I acknowledge that, which cometh nearer to the very letter of the very original verity," is equivocal, because it is not certain, whether "original verity" means original sense,' which most would approve, or 'original words,' which most would condemn, for the reason that the idiomatic differences between different languages would often make a literal translation of the several words of a foreign author unintelligible nonsense. Fuller, with his usual quaint felicity, has well expressed the common loose theory by a simile. Speaking of Sandys, whose admirable scriptural paraphrases ought to be better known than they are, he says, "He was a servant, but no slave, to his subject; well knowing that a translator is a person in free custody; custody, being bound to give the true sense of the author he translates; free, left at liberty to clothe it in his own expression.' 99%

Cicero and Quintilian, have speculated on the answer of Demosthenes, nóкpiois, Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! so few have ever adverted to the opinion of Libanius, that this reply was an ironical side-thrust at Æschines; an opinion which, if we are to interpret Demosthenes by himself, is rendered highly probable by the contemptuous sneers of the great orator at the ayań úñókρiσis of his rival, the special point of excellence in which he was himself confessedly inferior to Eschines?

* Very judicious observations on the principles of translation will be found in Purvey's Prologue to his Translation of the Scriptures, (about A.D. 1388,) Wycliffite versions, I. 57. The general doctrine of Purvey is thus stated: "First it is to knowe, that the best translating is, out of Latyn into English, to translate aftir the sentence, and not oneli aftir the wordis, so that the sentence be as opin, either openere, in English as in Latyn, and go not fer fro the lettre ; and if the letter mai not be suid in the translating, let the sentence be ever hool and open, for the wordis owen to serue to the entent and sentence, and ellis the wordis ben superflu either false." Purvey exemplifies by many comparisons between the Latin and English idioms, which show a very good knowledge of the principles of English grammar,

A friend of Lodge, who signs W. K., expresses sound opinions on this subject, though not in the purest style, in a letter prefixed to the second edition of Lodge's Seneca, 1620. "You are his profitable Tutor," says he, "and have instructed him to walke and talke in perfect English. If his matter hold not

The rule often laid down, that in translating a foreign work into English, we are to adopt the same style and diction which the author would have used had he been an Englishman," is mistaken or inapplicable, because, except in matters of naked fact, or natural science, a foreigner, writing for foreigners, has a totally different set of ideas to express, and a totally different mode of conceiving similar ideas from those which an Englishman, writing on the same subject, would have, and therefore he would have written a different book. Had Goethe and Richter been born and trained in England, the one could never have produced a Wilhelm Meister, or a Faust, the other never a Siebenkäs or a Quintus Fixlein. Had Shakespeare been a Frenchman by birth and education, the world had never seen a Hamlet or a Henry IV.

The true result to be aimed at, where we propose any thing beyond the communication of bare fact, is to produce. upon the mind of the English reader, so far as possible, the same impression which the original author produced upon

still the Roman characteristic, I should mistake him one of ours, he delivers his mind so significantly and fitly."

"That ye have not parrot-like spoken his owne words, and lost yourselfe literally in a Latine Echo, rendering him precisely verbatim, as if tied to his tongue; but retaining his Sence, have expressed his meaning in our proper English Elegancies and Phrase, is in a Translatour a discretion, &c., &c."

In a series of discourses on the English language, discussions of the origin and meaning of particular words can hardly be out of place anywhere, and therefore I shall be excused for here noticing a confusion of two English words of Latin etymology, both of which occur in the foregoing extracts. From the verb sentio, in its two acceptations, the Latins made the nouns sententia, opinion, meaning, and sensus, first, physical, afterwards, mental, perception. The Romans themselves, at last, confounded these two words. In Old-English, they were distinguished in form as well as meaning, for sentence in the time of Purvey was the Latin sententia. In Lodge's time, sentence had become sence, and we now use sense for both purposes, sentence having acquired the meaning of period, or proposition, as well as that of a judicial decree.