BOOKS.
AIOLIERE IN ENGLISH.* " MORE than a century has elapsed since the last edition of Moliere in English was issued in this country." So we learn
• Ifolierea Dramatic Works rendered into English. By Henri Van Laun. Vol. I. Edinburgb : W. Paterson. l8t5.
from the prospectus of the new translation by Mr. Van Laun, the first volume of which is now before us. That Moliere ha a long ceased to be read in English is a very significant fact. He is a writer who appeals to the many, and the many will never read with comfort any language but their own. "There are," says Sainte-Beuve, "five or six great works which have become part of the fixed capital of the human mind, and every one who learns to read is another reader for Moliere." According to Mr. Swin- burne, there is, too, a note of the English spirit in Moliere, an English current, as recognisable as undefinable, passing under and through the tide-stream of his genius ;" so "there is no third great Frenchman who has ever found such acceptance and sympathy among Englishmen unimbued with the French spirit as Rabelais and Moliere." There are obvious reasons why we could wish Rabelais left in the original. But Moliere ?—a writer sure to "find acceptance and sympathy," why has he not been naturalised among us ?
It will hardly be maintained that the majority of English readers can enjoy Moliere in the original. He is not at all like a French novelist, and besides, many of his phrases are antiquated, and even a French reader must turn sometimes to such a work as AL Genin's Lexique comparj de la Langue de MoRre. And as we said, the many never read with ease and thorough understanding any language but their own. Those who have lived abroad, and those who make literature their profession, are the only classes to whom a foreign language becomes a clear medium of ideas, and these two classes are by no means numerous. Moliere, then, ought to find many readers in an English translation, and yet for nearly a century no translation of him has been in use among M.
The fact is that we islanders are in some respects even more insular than we used to be, and care even less about the classics of other nations. Time was when one of our chief poets was honoured as the "grand translator, noble Geoffroy Chaucer." Even in the last century translations formed an important branch of our literature, but nobody reads them now-a-days, and Mr. Bohn's translators are not considered noble. True, Carlyle him- self has given us an English Wilhelm Meister, and Mr. Matthew Arnold has shown that the beauty of the original may be pre- served even in a prose translation by his exquisite versions from Heine in the Essays in Criticism; but the work of the translator is now considered journeyman-work, and there is no gainsaying Mr. Arnold when he insists that in this country the journeyman-work of literature is done very badly. The few foreign classics that have become lastingly popular among us (e.g., the Arabian Nights and Don Quixote) are narratives the interest of which is independent of literary form. Shakespeare has become as truly German as Handel is English, and a quotation from Hamlet or Macbeth is, perhaps, more readily recognised in Berlin than in London, but the ordinary Englishman knows nothing of Glitz or Egmont. Indeed we might almost say that the only book in which the English as a nation study thought and poetry expressed originally in a foreign language is the Bible. This neglect of translations, and the consequent dearth of worthy translations, is, however, much to be regretted. The great works of genius are not so numerous that we can afford to content ourselves with those of our own language. Translations have been compared to copies of pictures and plaster-casts of sculpture, and these will often give a very fair notion of the original. Not every one can go to Corinth, and those who must stay at home do well to learn something of the great monuments of foreign art from the Museum at South Kensington.
Thus firmly persuaded of the value of translations, we must express our gratitude to Mr. Van Laun for the work of which we now have the first instalment. His task is evidently a labour of love, and he gives us not merely a translation, but also many helps for the understanding of his author,—a biographical sketch, an account of previous translations, a separate introduction to each play, and notes which throw light on forgotten names and obscure allusions. In the appendix, too, we find scenes from old English plays, in which we have some lively imitations of Moliere. In his translation Mr. Van Laun has not attempted rhyme, or even metre, and here we think he is decidedly in the right. The metre without the rhyme would give no notion of the form of the original, and no one can rhyme like Moliere. "Moliere, avec son genie, rime b. bride abattue." Even Boileau asked in astonishment where he found his rhymes. We cannot, then, expect a translator, however able, to imitate him by giving a similar proof of genius ; but the loss is heavy indeed when a great master's rhyme and metre have to be sacrificed. To take an instance almost at ran- dom, Moliere makes Sganarelle say, speaking of unfaithful wives :—
faut que tout le mal tombe sur notre dos: Ellea font la Bottles, et none sommes lee sots."
The translator makes him say :— 4, All the mischief must fall upon our backs; they commit the clime, and we are reckoned guilty."
And here we must remark on the change which has taken place in our notions of what is to be expected of translators. When translations were read, more was required of the interpreter than than that he should know both languages, and accurately give his author's meaning. Like the famous dragoman in Eothen, he had to put the meaning in a form agreeable to those whom he addressed. He was therefore by no means careful to render his author word for word ; nor did he, like classical scholars of the Cambridge type, make it his main object to display his nice appreciation of foreign idioms. He knew that liberties, and even inaccuracies, which did not affect the essential spirit of the original, would be much more readily con- doned than clumsy, unnatural English which concealed its beauty. But now-a-days, we seem to have adopted the Whalleyan prin- ciple, "if you understand what I mean, it doesn't matter what I say ;" and so long as the translator puts us in possession of his author's meaning, he thinks he has done his duty, and leaves the form to take care of itself. That our modern notion of the translator's office is thus limited has been shown in the selection of scholars to revise the English Bible. A suggestion was made by a correspondent in these columns that some great masters of the art of expression (Mr. Bright and Mr. Matthew Arnold were, if we remember right, the two specially mentioned) should be among the number of the Revisers ; but no attention was paid to our correspondent, and though in some cases, notably in that of the Dean of Westminster, men of literary eminence are serving on the Committees, we believe they were all chosen simply on account of their Biblical learning. There can be little doubt that our translations suffer much from this neglect of the art of expression. "La nettet6 est le vernis des mitres," and this polish may be given to the expression of another's meaning as well as of our own. But to get anything approaching to it is a work of great difficulty, and requires among other conditions that the writer or translator should be free to express the meaning as best he can. Ordinary translators, however, care little for this polish, and they dread the reproach of inaccuracy too much to take liberties. The consequence is, their style reminds us of nothing so much as of the gait of the fettered prisoners in the chorus in Fidelio, when they hobble across the stage with an elaborate constraint, as if the least sign of freedom would be in- consistent with the part they were assuming.
We are not at all sure that Mr. Van Laun would agree with us on the subject of translating. He is evidently a great admirer of directness and simplicity—virtues Which we, too, hold in high estimation, especially when we have been reading the inflated language which passed for "style" in the last century—but we do not forget that now and then (si caret arte) directness may sink into baldness. Oddly enough, Mr. Van Laun is intolerant of affected forms of expression, even in the mouths of the Precieuses. When Madelon says, "Si vous poursuivez le m4rite, ce n'est pas sur nos terres que vous devez chasser," Mr. Van Laun robs her of her trope, and makes her say bluntly, "If you pursue merit, you should not come to us,"—and this, although the translation by Baker and Miller, which he evidently had at hand, gives, "It's not on our grounds that you must hunt."
"We're but copies all,
And want the spirit of th' original,"
says the old prologue to Sganarelle, but there is a great difference in copies, and in the case of literary copies each should be nearer to the original than its predecessors. The first trans- lation of Moliere (by John Ozell, the universal translator) is unknown to us, but Mr. Van Laun says that it "is full of racy and sometimes even witty expressions." Mr. Van Laun has, on the whole, greatly improved on Baker and Miller's translation ; but he sometimes alters it for the worse, and the changes he makes seldom render the translation more lively.
The only play of great interest in this first volume is the Pricieuses Ridicules. The first performance of this play marks the commencement of a new era in comedy. Then it was that an old man among the audience gave expression to the general feeling, and called aloud to Moliere, himself one of the actors, "Courage, Moliere; voilit la bonne comedie !" Then it was that Ménage showed his discernment by declaring, "From this day forward we must, like Clovis, burn what we have worshipped, and worship what we have burned." And Moliere then became fully conscious of his genius. Although, as he said, on another occasion, " C'etait son habitude de reprendre son bien partout ois il le trouvait," he now knew that "son hien" was not to be looked for in the library. "I need no longer," said he, "study Plautus and Terence and pick the fragments of Menander. I have but to study the world." Whoever wishes to understand the development of the French manners, and indeed of the French language, must make a study of French euphuism, and this can hardly be thought of apart from the P, ecieuses Ridicules, in which Moliere attacks the Precieuses Galantes, and the still greater, but not more amusing, play in which he attacks the Precieuses Savantes. For an excellent account of the rise and influence of the Hotel de Rambouillet we would refer our readers to the preface of M. Livet's reprint of Le Dictionnaire des Precieuses, by Somaize.
We will conclude with a suggestion. Mr. Van Laun is giving us an edition de luxe, which can do little or nothing to popularise Moliere among us. It would be a great boon to the general reader if the translator would make a selection of Moliere's best plays and publish them in a cheap form, say in the form of Warne's " Chandos Classics." There have been some marvellous revivals both in music and literature, and the day may yet come when even an Englishman might say, with Sainte-Beuve, "Every one who learns to read is another reader for Moliere."
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