TRANSLATION AT CAMBRIDGE; MR. KENNEDY'S DEMOSTHENES.* Ma. KENNEDY'S translations of
Demosthenes are a very peculiar fruit of the very peculiar classical training which the racalern system of competition has gradually unfolded at the University of Cambridge, and as they are, we believe, generally accepted there as among the best classical prose translations produced of late years by members of that University, they possess a claim to our interest distinct from the mere scholarship which they display. In order to enter more fully into the exact spirit and genius of these translations, it will be necessary to consider in a few words the gradual effect of the modern classical tripes upon the modern classical scholarship of Cambridge. The gradual effect of the classical tripos in the very few years which have followed its establishment there, offers one of the most curious and instructive pages in the records of English educa- tion. We have too much respect for the spirit and energy of the Cambridge training to inveigh indiscriminately against that which, in the language of its foes, is called the Cam- bridge system of cramming. We merely wish to describe the effect produced upon the art of translation by an in- stitution, of which cramming in its grosser forms is only one of the incidental and coarser results. When academic honours were invented, depending no longer upon some work of learning or art, the result of special genius or talent matured by academic study, and the fruit of an intellectual growth fostered under exceptionally favourable circumstances, the whole conditions of University success were reversed. Formerly a scholar, though residing at the University and enjoying all its advantages, could acquire a name only by that kind of maturity in study which enabled him to add to the stock of human thought, either by the direct results of positive learning or by the beautiful form .which he contributed to time materials already worked out by other men. If he only learnt what other men had said or done before him, with- out adding anything of his own worthy the name of an addition to the existing fund, or putting old materials into a new and better form, such a man, however useful, was felt to have no claim to " honours" in any proper sense of the word. He passed unnoticed. The Barrows and the Bacons, the Newtons and the Bentleys, were men of a different stamp. They would have smiled at the notion of being crowned with academic laurels merely for learning in a very mutilated form what other men had learnt before them. And yet the direct tendency of a competitive tripos, weighted with overwhelming pecuniary bribes, is exactly to discard everything original, because anything original may, and probably will not " pay," whereas set results have a fixed and marketable value. Accordingly, any one familiar with Cambridge knows that literal translations abound there, very literal, very bald, very "accurate" (accurate is the adjectiourn loci), and cer- tainly very useful to large numbers of men, the aim of whose col- legiate life, so far as learning is concerned, is so to be able to con- strue any particular classical author as to defy the ingenuity of the examiner in proving them incorrect in the smallest particular. Now it may be shown almost to demonstration, taking large averages, that in order to carry out this one lowest aim, it is absolutely necessary to sacrifice every single higher attribute of a really good translation. For, in order so to translate the spirit of the author, the age to which ho belonged, the general sources of his thought and style, his own personal genius, his place in the chain of literature, in a word, all the questions which consti- tute the essence and the highest fruit of scholarship, must be dili- gently eschewed, under penalty of certain and ignominious compe- titive failure—for failure has become ignominious at Cambridge— and we challenge any sincere man to deny it. We know it will be said that, under the present system, a larger number of men get a sterner training than they would otherwise get. We do not wish to deny this, and we greatly admire the stern element in the Cambridge training. But we are here only concerned to trace the effect of the classical tripos upon the highest kind of scholar- ship, upon true restimetical culture, as distinguished from mere training. We have no wish to blame a University we love, but only to describe what we think we see. Again, it will be said that, at all events, the successful candidates are able to devote their life to original thought. Those who say this forget that n nine cases in ten the severity of the preparatory training fixes the lines of thought for ever, and withers up every channel but that of mental acquisitiveness.
To study an ancient author in a comprehensive spirit requires me, reflection, a comparatively slow purification of taste, with a
* The Orations of Demosthenes against Maculates. Leoehares, S'ephanus I Stephens,
oke. Translated by Charles Hann Kennedy. Forming the Fifth and concluding Volume of the Works of Demosthenes. London: Henry G. Bohn. certain amount of circumambient reading, apparently irrelevant, but, nevertheless, as necessary to the growth of original thought as air and sunshine are to the growth of plants. But all this is out of the question with a competitive examination ahead, backed by prizes ranging from ninety to three hundred a year for life, or for a term of years. Even if under such an incubus a man happen to chance upon an original thought, he will generally be compelled by the doubt attending each experiment to adopt time safer course, and time safer course almost invariably lies in the choice of one of two methods, each of which is equally stereotyped ; either the student will give the most literal rendering in his power, or, if he aims very high, he will give those particular finesses of translation which are sanctioned by the tacit opinion of the authorities for the time being, and which are elaborated, not by himself, but by a peculiar breed of tutors, who spend a laborious life, and all the wits that heaven gave them, in discovering up and down the field of English literature small delicacies of idiomatic expression, which fit closest to any half-dozen words of Greek or Latin. The best and most distinguished of these tutors—" coaches" they are called, are those who have made the largest collection of these competitive sugar-plums, whether for turning Greek and Latin into English, or English into Greek or Latin, and the highest excellence at which they aim in either case is to produce a party-coloured mosaic, composed of bits of borrowed jewellery, with here a cracked pearl and there a splinter of diamond, there a flower from Chaucer and here a quaint nugget from Bacon, and all this not by any means for the sake of ornament or finery. Very far from it. The most fastidious artist could not have a more rooted contempt for finery than a true Cambridge man. If they embroider these laborious scraps of many colours, and stow them away ready for competitive use, it is in the single-minded pursuit of the most absolute accuracy, which they fondly think attainable, combined with all the graces of idiomatic rendering, and strange though it may seem, it is, we believe, strictly true, that time majority ultimately fall into believing that this is the real end of scholar- ship, and these translations the highest embodiment of classical art superadded to classical truth. As well might we tack the nose of an Assyrian to the face of a Chinaman, put a pigtail at the top, the legs of a Cherokee Indian at the bottom, and fancy we had created the perfect man I It would scarcely have been possible for men of so much earnestnAs, devotion, and ability, as many of them undoubtedly are, to have fallen complacently into such an illusion, if the con- stipating tendency of the disproportionate prizes under compe- tition at Cambridge had not bound down their thought into an iron groove, from which it should be the very aim of University culture to emancipate them. We need hardly add that some of them, and, which will not be denied, more especially the Trinity men, rebel against the tyranny of such a system. They try, no doubt, to enlarge time framework of classical reading, and to encourage a more scholarly spirit. But, on the whole, their rebellion does not, and, against such odds, cannot, transcend the limits of an occasional snarl. The majority of the men who take high honours, are poor men working for a livelihood. With the chance of a provision for life before them, it is idle to preach to them about original thought or comprehensive study, the formation of taste or the training for independent labour, and tutors who have a regard for their pupils struggling for exist- ence, would think it a cruel mockery not to warn them against leaving the beaten track. Accordingly they do warn them against it most earnestly, kindly, and on every fitting occasion. And, inasmuch as a mania liable to be examined in all the classics, and it is absolutely impossible that he can study them all ex- haustively in the time required, all really literary and historical questions, everything, in fact, beyond the letter and appertaining to the spirit, is carefully thrown into the background, and by curious misapplication of the opprobrious epithet called "cram." The stray paper set upon criticism and the history of classical literature is contemptuously called the " cram " paper, and those who take time trouble to answer it are goodnaturedly chaffed by their fellow undergraduates. We remember a paper set by one of time most cultivated and accomplished members of the University, containing a question requiring the illustration of the truth that "philology is the handmaid of history." These, if we well remember, were time actual words. The ques- tion stood first on the paper, and, as the men read it, a suppres- sed, but well defined, ironical chuckle might have been heard from one and of time hall to the other. But that which really tells is translation. And this is practised as a knack, independently of all questions concerning the author, for it is impossible to
ar all, and therefore needless to master any. First in the .e of merit stands the bald, literal, correct translation, con-
fling which the student often boasts—it is a stereotyped sAre by this time—with a thankful heart and exulting spirit, that he translated such and such a passage with unimpeachable fidelity, and had not the remotest notion what on earth it all meant. Next comes the translation creeping close to the shore, yet occasionally snatching timidly at a vernacular idiom, with a fearful sense of forbidden fruit, the insecurity of life in general, and the awful chances of examinations in particular. Highest of all stands the University pet and pupil of some half-dozen University magnates, who have bestowed upon him the rich accumulated stores of all their classical gourmandise, and a life spent in rasping Sophocles, and lEschylus to fit Shakespeare, and deflowering Shakespeare to fit lEschylus and Sophocles.
If we have succeeded in expressing ourselves clearly, we shall have less difficulty in explaining the peculiarities of Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy's translations of Demosthenes. They are the work of one of the most accomplished among modern Cambridge scholars. They are, therefore, in the main extremely accurate. But their aim is:to escape from the baldness of literal translation, while retaining the fidelity necessary to defy the examiner. This is their first aim. Their second, is to embody critical scholarship in such a way as to seem to say :—" Time forbids me in the limits of an examination to write notes upon each word of this passage. But if you attend to my choice of English you will see that I am a per- fect master,of all the discussions respecting each point. I defy you to prove me incorrect. I defy you to say that my English is not the most terse and elegant English consistent with translation per- formed by the hour-glass, and with an accurate knowledge of the exact critical sense of the vocables before me. I defy you not to give me the highest marks." In other words, Mr. Kennedy's translations are those which a very first-rate senior classic, with the reputation of really fine scholarship, might write for the championship of the tripos or the Chancellor's medal. This is their fundamental character, very much softened by profes- sional studies at the bar—one essential qualification at least towards any fair translation of Demosthenes—and a professed desire on Mr. Kennedy's part to give a free translation for the benefit of the general reader. But a Cambridge Senior Classic could no more give a really free translation than a steam-engine could meander like a pony chaise. Nor would it be desirable, if he could. Even Mr. Kennedy's substitution of English law terms, such as parish, jury, indictment for deme, dicast, graphe, can hardly be called a liberty, since the use of the Greek terms would be scarcely con- sistent with any English properly so called. The good qualities —and they are very notable—of Mr. Kennedy's translations are the absence of all frippery and display ;—for in a translation of Demosthenes borrowed tit-bits would be out of the question— reverence for the text of the author, a masculine straightforward- ness of expression, a keen external sense of the nearest English combination of idioms that will fit the Greek, and a more or less felicitous application of English law terms. Considered as con- tributions to the library of the scholar, they possess an unques- tionable value. On the other hand, they can never, we think, occupy a place in English literature as Langhorne's trans- lation of Plutarch, or even as Leland's Demosthenes, though Leland probably wanted the abundant materials of which Mr. Kennedy could avail himself. Lord Brougham says of Leland, that though he wrote good English, he did not translate Demos- thenes as a practical statesman would have done. This is partly true. But Leland is very homogeneous and musical, and homo- geneity of style depending upon a central conception in trans- fusing an author from one language into another, is essential to literary duration, and differs fundamentally from even the most accurate mosaic of idioms pieced together ab extern°. Lord Brougham's view, that Demosthenes should be translated by a practical statesman, lawyer, and orator, is a sound one. His own translation of the "Crown" is indescribably pretentious and heavy. He bad the merit of a good intention. Mr. Kennedy is never pretentious and never heavy. Lord Brougham, after an ela- borate criticism of Cicero's attempts at a translation of Demos- thenes, out-Cicero's Cicero in parliamentary fluff, and the mouthing, rotatory talk so dear to British audiences. The piercing directness, the almost contempt of language, the white and shining brilliancy of Demosthenes, softened by the grace of the Attic tongue, are smothered in the hard and gritty cotton of Lord Brougham's oratory. Mr. Kennedy's habits of Cambridge accuracy, and his Cambridge contempt for mere words, have given a directness of effect to his translation which is very Demosthenean. But he is hard, and his melody disjointed and halting, arisieg from the choice of idiomatic language bit by bit to fit the Greek, but not molten in a central conception arising out of the nature of the translator himself. His mosaic is wonderfully good and lifelike, but it is a mosaic. The sweep of a central unity is lost.
In attempting to describe faithfully it is not easy to escape the imputation of ill-will or satire. But we must again repeat that. for the many and great excellencies of Cambridge education, we feel a very sincere respect and admiration. If we have taken pains to point out viliat appear to us to be certain patent and inevitable results of the classical tripos, as it is at present con- ducted, and of the evil effects of the enormous prizes upon the studies of the undergraduates, it is in the hope that the many distinguished members of that University, whose name and associations are dear to us, may not relax their efforts to over- come defects which they .appreciate even far more than we are able to do.
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