s the creations of Homer, and
of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet?
And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by
deprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer
though so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture
of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and
Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through
which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would
incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby's Iliad has gone
through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we
have done without them in English? Translations are the
telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in
other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from
their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth
and wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first launched
has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the
message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is
freighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges,
because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost
somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we wish to have
as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the
poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation
of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological
exposition,--a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in verse,
that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made
to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth
every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that.
A prose translation of a poem is an aesthetic impertinence,
Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent
in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him
in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much
telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such
touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even
in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic
sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were
the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the
deflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward
translated the