Don Carlos, Infant of Spain. Translated from the German of
Schiller. By Thomas Selby Egan, M.A. (Williams and Norgate.)—Mr. Egan has "endeavoured to combine an order of words sufficiently close to the text to be useful to the learner of German, with an approach to the metre of the original sufficient to make it readable." He succeeds better in the first of these two objects than in the second. The transla- tion is generally too stiff and hard, marked by that fidelity which is painful rather than instructive, and sticking to the literal meaning where the latter is an absurdity. Thus we have- " To call the chamber-lady, Because I longed to fondle the Infanta,' and similar phrases, which may help the learner of German, but will not be agreeable to the reader. Mr. Egan seems to have forgotten that poetical translations are only likely to be read for the sake of their poetry, and that prose must serve, if rigid fidelity is needed.
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