POETRY. —The Garden of Fragrance, being a Complete Translation of the
Bostan of Sddi into English Verse. By J. S. Davie, M.D. (Kegan Paul and Co.)—None bat a good Oriental scholar can judge the whole question as to the value of such a translation as this; but in his remarks on the principles to be followed in translations in general, we cannot bat think the translator of these poems greatly mistaken. He says in his preface :—" I have endeavoured to make it as literal as possible, and, by imitating Sadi's metre (anapaestic tetrameters) and rhyme, to give it, in some measure, the ring of the original. With very few exceptions, each line is the equivalent of the corresponding line in the Persian. This has not been accomplished without sacrificing, to some extent, elegance of diction." In our opinion, the translator has sacrificed a good deal more than that. When languages, even coming originally from the same fountain-head, have, in the long course of ages, diverged as widely as have English and Persian, it is fatal not only to the beauty, but to the sense of a translation, to make it a literal one. We take, at random, a proof of the truth of this from a short poem "On the Frailty of Creatures and the-Glory of God," p. 137. It begin?,- " The pathway to wisdom is twist upon twist, For the holy the Maker alone can exist.
You can tell this to people who truths recognise, But people of theory will criticise."
Then, after a few lines, these words occur :-
" Bot when will mere surface-observers obtain A elimpse of where spiritual persons remain ? For if it's the sac, not a speck they descry ; If the whole seven seas, not a drop can they spy ; When the Sultan of glory his flat has unfiu l'd, Into Nullity's collar collapses the world!"
The merely narrative parts sound a little better than this twaddly sing-song, and there are some good stories, of the obviously moralising kind, set in thoroughly Eastern style ; but, on the whole, it is a poor book, as, with each a principle of translation, it must be true to the letter only.—Prizes and Proximes for Prose and Verse Translation, with Some Original Poems by Contributors to the Journal of Education. (John Walker and Co.)—The translations in this book, following, as we hold it to be, the true principle of grasping the spirit rather than the letter of the original, are much more pleasant reading, and some of them strikingly good. A ballad such as "Les Souvenirs du People," of Beranger, is most difficult to render into English so as to keep some of the sparkling intensity of feeling thrown into its original French by that master of the ballad style. Yet the anonymous "J. R." has acccmplished this, and we only regret it is too long for quo- tation. Another very happy effort is the version of Victor Hugo's sonnet, " A Petite Jeanne," by Mrs. J. S. Philpotts. There are in the volume three translations of this sonnet, and, though all are good, we prefer, with the compiler, the one first named. There is an excel- lent rendering, by Miss Annie Matheson, of " In der Ferne," by Geibel; and " &boaster Tod" is also very spiritedly rendered in the English of the Rev. James Robertson, from the verses of W. Muller.
It is an interesting collection, and to show how miscellaneous, we will conclude our notice with one or two of the " Maxims on Education" :-
" He who depends upon a child's candour is likely to find the virtue on which he relies ; he who assumes a child's dishonesty will too often sow the germs of that which he fears. To treat children as unworthy of consideration is a cruel mistake ; to behave as if they alone were to be considered is a mistake more cruel still."
—Songs of Many Days. By K. C. (Marcos Ward and Co.)—The motto of this little volume of poems is, " Look, then, into thine heart, and write " and the wish rises in the mind of the reader of them that the author's heart had been full of less saddening tales. Several of them are classical in their origin, and the first especially, on the legend of the daughters of Prcetns, who were stricken with madness for despising the worship of Dionysus, scarcely repays by beauty of
style for the melancholy of the subject. " Antigone " is the subject of the second, and neither here nor in any of the others can we find lines sufficiently fine to invest a well-worn subject with new interest, though many of the poems read mitsically.— Storm-drift, and other Poems, by H. E. Clarke (David Bogue), is, as its name imports, a book full of horrors, not the least of these being the atmosphere of unbelief in which it seems to have come to light, if, indeed, we can mention light in the midst of such gloom. The author needs to be reminded that no stringing-together of wild and weird suggestions can by itself constitute poetry, and that it needs more than the power, which he possesses to a certain extent, of imagining the thoughts and feelings suitable to certain circum- stances, to give to a description a truly poetic form. We hope it was not the author, but the printer, who put " wrapt " for "rapt." —The Praise and Blame of Love is got up in the unfinished style now prevalent, and the poems themselves seem to partake of it ; they are fragmentary, and spoilt by affectations. The author's name is not given, bat the publishers are (Wilson and McCormick, Glasgow) evidently Scotch, a fact which the book itself would hardly have sug- gested.—A smaller volume, and quite unlike the former, is Poems, by Alexander Carruthers. (Porteous Brothers, Glasgow.)—The senti- ments appear, as far as they do appear, to be of the best ; but there does not appear with them the poetical skill, either in form or style, which alone can justify the publication of them.—In the next book which presents itself, we have the effusions of a mind which has already made itself known to the public. Still, in Poems, Lyrics, and Sonnets, by L. S. Bevington (Eliot Stock), we fail to discover the merit which would justify high appreciation. The vague miserable- ness which seems to beset those who are called advanced thinkers runs riot everywhere, and is scarcely redeemed by the little flashes of genuine truth of feeling which are apparent here and there. We have looked through the " Sonnets " for one to quote, that our readers may judge for themselves, but cannot find one worthy of transcription; so we will give, instead, two verses from a short poem called, " How do I Know ?" which is far better than the long philo- sophical rhymings amidst which it stands :—
" How do I know you good ? Because, dear love, In needing you
My inmost soul most urgently desires Great goodness too ; Pure skies alone c a win a turbid sea To perfect blue.
One little, lovely victory for your sake, O'er my mad blood, One little hour when higher than myself I knew I stood, • One stillness, dear, has taught the blessed truth My love is good."
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