way from him, is a magnificent execution.
A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world;
vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of
touch--marvellous!

* * * * *

French translation is the only translation; in England you still continue
to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used to do the
same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of two things--if
the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse for that of the
original;--I don't want his verse, I want the original;--if he is a bad
poet, he gives us bad verse, which is intolerable. Where the original poet
put an effect of caesura, the translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the
original poet puts an effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of
caesura. Take Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the
original as our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take
Bayard Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one
with an ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the
original did not exist. The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful,
but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They
are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of a
"splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he had
read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not different from
Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir Theodore Martin, is
doggerel.

* * * * *

But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you
could into prose?

* * * * *

I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your mind
away from that of the original.

* * * * *

But if you don't know the original?

The rhythm of the original can be suggested in prose judiciously used; even
if it isn't, your mind is at least free, whereas the English rhythm must
destroy the sensation of something foreign. There is no translation except
a word-for-word translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's
translation of Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke
that is untranslatable is explained in a note.

* * * * *

But that is the way young ladies translate--word for word!