CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Song of the Bell. By Schiller. Translated by E. P. Arnold- Forster. (John Dale and Co., Bradford.)—This is a spirited trans- lation, which gives a very good impression of the original as a whole. Here and there Mr. Arnold-Forster misses, we think, a shade of meaning,—for instance, Schiller means more by saying,- " Woblthatig ist des Fellers Becht
Wenn s'e der Mensch bezlihmt, bawacht,"—
than Mr. Arnold-Forster expresses by saying,— "Valued is the mighty flame Watched by man, confined, and tame."
Schiller says more than that under these circumstances, fire is valued by man,—namely, that it is beneficent, a blessing to man. On the other hand, Mr. Arnold-Forster translates most effectively the passage in which Schiller describes how dangerous fire becomes when it escapes its trammels :-
" But fearful lengths its power attains, When having shaken loose its chains, It takes its own direction wild, Nature's tree ungoverned child."
Taken as a whole, the translation is very fresh and impressive.
Messrs. Triihner and Co. send us a very gorgeous edition of Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, illustrated by Lndvig Sandoe Ipsen, each sonnet being printed in capitals, with an illustrative border or garland round it. The whole volume is enclosed in a case. There is a portrait of Mrs. Browning as a frontispiece. The edition is a splendid one, though for reading we should certainly prefer a less bulky volume. It is a defect in the work that there is no index of first lines, so that unless one remembers where one's favourites come in the series of forty-four sonnets, one has to hunt through the whole to find it. The illustrative margins and fly-leaves to each Sonnet are very graceful.
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