TRANSLATIONS.

AFIRST-RATE craftsman has said that the two main duties of a translator are towards his original and towards his readers. In every language they have been disregarded. Pope's eulogy of Dryden would not be endorsed by modern scholars, and still lees by modern poets. To convert a lyric from one language into another is a feat so extremely difficult that a minute volume would contain the successful examples. The greater poets either never tried, or failed, and gave up the attempt in despair. Who, as C. S. Calverley said, could translate into any tongue

"The casement slowly grows a glimmering square" and it may be added, how could any tongue but our own render adeqUately "Take, 0 take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn"?

A version may be faithful, like Conington's Virgil, but entirely lacking in the atmosphere that characterizes Dr. Gilbert Murray's unrivalled Hippolytus.

These reflections are suggested by the singularly beautiful trans- lation of Desportes' " Icarus " that Major Maurice Baring recently published in the Times. It is by no means certain that any trans- lation has quite equalled in accuracy and charm this remarkable effort. The fidelity of the actual phrasing, the carefully retained rhythm, and even the metrical resemblance, are beyond criticism and praise.

0 rare performanee of a soul sublime, That with small loss such great advantage buys !"

is a Shakespearean rendering of "0 bienheureux travail d'un esprit glorieula Qui tire im id grand gain d'un si petit dommage ! "

While in the closing couplet- " Le ciel fut son deka in mar an sepultuce ; Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus risks tombeau I "—

translated-

" The sea his grave, his goal the firmament : Great is the tomb, but greater the desire "- Major Baring has, thanks to his craft, and to our incomparable lyrical tongue, surpassed the sixteenth-century poet.

There are three lines of George Wyndham's, paraphrased from

Ronsard, that in turning French into English come perhaps nearest to Major Baring's verse :—

"So in the wonder of that first young loveliness

Which earth rose up to praise, and heaven bent down to bless, Fate came : and all of these one little urn encloses."

The difficulty of converting one language into the terms of another is well exemplified by the French and English translations of the

Emperor Hadrian's short poem, "Ad animism suam." Fentenelle's version contains one charming couplet :—

" Tu pars eeulette, et tremblante. lielas Que deviendra ton humeur foliehonne " Merivale failed altogether, but Matthew Prior, who was rarely baffled, succeeded better.

Whatever the demerits of an Eton education may be, Etoniaaui have a fine record in this difficult pastime. Dr. Hawtrey's trans- lation of a celebrated passage in the third book of the Iliad is well known. No translation could better fulfil Calverley's test than the whole of the miraculous passage that begins—

"Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia"— to its concluding lines :— " They long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaemon."

Hartley Coleridge, who tried his hand on the best-known lyric of Callimachus, failed where William Cory, paraphrasing, was so delightfully successful :-

"They They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. - And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake, For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take."

If Major Baring's accuracy is unobtain.ed here, modern taste recog- nizes the limitation, and prefers Mr. Cory's paraphrase of the original Greek to a more exact and banal reproduction.

Of paraphrases perhaps the most perfect in form and in happy grasp of the spirit of a poem is by another Eton master, the late Herbert Snow. It has passed comparatively unnoticed by col- lectors of rare and beautiful verse. Many have tried their skill upon .Meleager's dirge, and Pr. Hawtrey's version was worthy of his transcendent knowledge and workmanship, but he was distanced in this by the less-known scholar and poet :— " Still my tears for thee unceasing Bow, Still though thou art laid below, These affection's lingering drops I pour, Heliodore !

Bitter tears : which shed, while yet they lave This thy lamentable grave, Wild regrets that love's fond memories stare, Heliodore !

Piteously for love among the dead Meleager's heart hath bled, Heaping sighs on Acheron's thankless shore,

Heliodore I

Lightly under thine enriching mould To a mother's breast unfold, Earth, I pray thee, her whom all deplore, Heliodore ! "

The vast mass of translation into verse has proved to be bathos and doggerel. Sometimes the translator has been over-ingenious. Often the impossible has been attempted. Verlaine, at his beet, is untranslatable, So are the greatest sonnets by Keats and Wordsworth. So perhaps is Horace, and certainly the lyrics in Cymbeline. The trial, however, as Major Baring has proved, is worth making, although it required a penetrating knowledge of the two languages, a daring courage, and superlative skill, to attempt

the flight of Icarus, and not meet with his fate. ESHER.