FRENCH POEMS IN ENGLISH.*
Tars anthology, designed for school use, has French on one page and a verse translation opposite. Miss Nutt has set forth noble principles in her preface which are hardly ful- filled in her translations. She aims at giving the meaning of the French in poetry which shall convey as well the emotion of the original. Instead, however, of simply acknowledging the basks differences between the French syllabic and the English accentual metric systems, and proceeding to give as nearly as possible an English affective equivalent, she has attempted to reproduce as well the feeling of the French rhyme and rhythm. Although she disdains literal versions and does not intend her book for a key translation, she has kept too much to the letter of the French and has neglected the sound and the associa- tive values of the English words. Admittedly, she has set herself an almost impossible task, but we should like to recom- mend her to Mr. Synge's translations of Petrarch, and Eugene Field's' versions of Horace, not to mention Chaucer's "Remount of the Rose" for suggestions. From the English point of view her verses leave one cold, and we suspect them of not being poetry. The selection, however, is good, though we deplore the absence of Villon.
• Some Dm:dation+ from Us French. By Minute PE, _D. Nutt, London: Methuen, [2s, 61)
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