17 NOVEMBER 1888, Page 18

Schiller's Wallenstein. Translated by C. G. N. Lockhart. (William Blackwood

and Sons.)—Mr. Lockhart has given us a very readable rendering of Schiller's great drama. His transla- tion is probably both truer and more literal than that of Coleridge. He has, as he tells us in his preface, the advantage of knowing the German language almost better than his own. Still, we do not think that English readers will prefer his work to that of his rival. Coleridge's translation may have its faults—it has, no doubt—but he was a poet himself ; and here it is that Mr. Lock- hart contrasts unfavourably with him. In some of the finest passages of the poem—as Wallenstein's entreaty to Max Picco- lomini not to desert him, or in his famous lines to Fortune a little before his assassination—this is clearly evident. Neverthe- less, Mr. Lockhart's blank verse is above the average of that employed by translators. Occasionally it is a little too rough, and in places his English is rather curious. But, on the whole, it is a good translation.