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takes which even competent translators fall into . Curiously enough , the versions of Mignon ' s song , " Kennst du das Land , " almost invariably betray the same thoughtlessness in rendering " Kennst du es wohl—Dost thou know it well" the German wohl being simply an expletive , and Mignon by no means caring for an accurate knowledge of Italy—all she asks is , do you know the land ? To laugh at a translator and accuse him of ignorance for such mistakes is scarcely fair ; but some *
thing of this microscopic criticism is now going on in Germany , apropos of two rival translations of Macaulay ' s History of England—the one by Professor Bub law , of Leipsig , an accredited histor ian—the other by Here Paret , of Stuttgart . The Professor was first in the field ; but his rival , in announcing a new translation , felt himself called upon to point out the errors in the Professor ' s yersion . He animadverts upon the Professor ' s un-German phrases , which he attributes either to slavish imitation of the original , or to the want of
style . The Professor retorts , shows up Paret ' s Suabian German , bad style , and , above all , his ignorance of the original . One phrase seems to have puzzled them both . Ma caul , ay speaks of the " British adventurers , " which Paret absurdly renders " brittische Unternehmungsgeist " — the Professor , with equal inaccuracy , " brittische Abentheurer . " A third critic steps in to show that ** adventure , " in those days , meant commercial speculation ( comp . Shylock ' s " Other ventures he hath , squandered abroad" ) , and British adventurers , therefore , means British Merchants .
If this sort of microscopic criticism were applied to German wprks " done into English , " what reams of controversy would issue from the press ! Of all literary work , there is none so careless and inefficient as that of our translators—partly because translation requires rare knowledge and peculiar aptitude , but greatly also because the law of copyright , by enabling cheaper and inferior versions to be brought out , prevents the translator meeting with an adequate reward .
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craik ' s romance op the peerage . The Bomance of the Peerage : or Curiosities of Family History ' By George Lillie Craik , Professor of History and of English Litorature in the Queen ' s College , Belfast . Vol . IV . Chapman and Hall . This is the fourth , and , for the present , concluding , volume of Professor Craik ' s most valuable and interesting contribution to our historical literature . We hope soon to see the series resumed ; for volumes of such sterling and substantial merit are not to be met with every day .
There is no portion of history , however carefully it may have been investigated by previous enquirers , wherein a conscientious and able writer , setting himself to collect facts out of the original authorities , and to arrange these facts according to his own method , may not make positive discoveries . It is all the same what period is selected ; let but a competent man go into the period and repeat for himself the work of research and , within one fortnight , he will produce new matter—indisputably authentic , and yet perfectly novel both to himself and to the
public . And the importance of this remark gains much when we consider how history is at present almost universally written . Suppose we have occasion to become acquainted with , or as authors say , to get up any period of history , and suppose that for this purpose we collect a few books of reputed merit on that particular period—the chances arc that on consulting them we shall find a wretched sameness in them all , a sameness of arrangement , a sameness of judgment on men and events , a sameness even in the wording of the successive paragraphs . Whence does this arise ? It arises from
wiconscientiozisnessfrom positive and gross dishonesty . Some one man has gone to the original sources and got the facts out of them ; the other writers have simply taken this writer ' s book and exercised their ingenuity in pretending to got up books of their own by borrowing his language and his materials . Every one who has occasion to read much history must know this to be true : true not only of our own writers and of unscrupulous Frenchmen , but true also of the plodding Germans" about whom one hears so much . Hence
loads of the most wearisome and insipid rubbish under the name of history , and a proportion of good historical books to bad , not , perhaps , exceeding one per cent . Unconscientioitsncss , we say , lies at the bottom of all this . Lot but a conscientious man jro into nny period of history whatever , we repeat , and he will bring out 1 ( - ' » ults perfectly astonishing . And
it is by this process—by conscientious men selecting each some little bit of the past and labouring to make it clear , that the whole past will , if ever , begin to become known and interesting to us . Were we to seek in . the list of our living literary men for a writer deserving to be selected as a type of this class of conscientious men , from whom so much .
is to be expected in . the department of historical literature , we should scarcely find a rival to Professor Craik . He is conscientiousness itself ; what he does is done strictly and well ; whatever part of history he walks over becomes truer and clearer and more vivid in consequence . Add to this quality—a quality without which all else would be worthlesshis rare intellectual excellences—his broad historical
sagacity , his manliness of moral feeling , his multifarious and accurate learning acquired in the course of a long literary career , and his quiet but genuine love of the anecdotic and the humorous — and the importance of such a man ' s services in the historical field will appear in the proper light . It was a happy thought of Mr . Craik , and suggested , doubtless , by a right sense of his
own capabilities , to choose the family history of our aristocracy as ground for a new literary attempt . Masses of noble story lie buried in books of the peerage ; and to extract thence a few striking episodes , botH as specimens of the whole and as tending in the meantime to throw collateral interest and clearnees over the general history of England , is a work of real utility and merit .
The volume before us realizes the wording of the title , The Romance of the Peerage , better than its predecessors . The title is somewhat objectionable , both as creating a false impression of the contents of the book in the minds of such as had yet to read it , and as doing injustice to Mr . Craik ' s singular and characteristic merit as a master of the art of accurate and laborious investigation . Indeed , one may assert that the very excellence of the preceding volumes was in a measure frustrated by the title people came expecting to be ' * thrilled "—they were only instructed ; and the more painstaking his conscientious research , the greater their disappointment .
Romance was buried beneath history ; piquancy had to yield the precedence to exactitude . But the volume before us , with all its laboriousness , really fulfils the title—the stories it contains are essentially romantic , are essentially pleasant and animating reading . They are twelve in number , and almost all belong to the History of the Peerage in the seventeenth century . There is first the story of the " Great Earl of Cork and the Boyles ; " then that of " the Founder of the Fermor Family ; " then that of " the First of the Bouveries ; " then a sketch of the history of " the Ducal Osbornes : " this is followed by a similar
which has carried him so far , ought , it may be thought to carry him still farther . Having lifted him up to be a baron or a viscount , why should its action stop till it has elevated him to a Marqtaisate or a Dukedom ? " But the fact is , tha \ to surmount the barrier which separates the peerage from the rest of the communitv is generally speaking , easier than to pass from one rank of the peerage to another . The structure narrows faster than it rises . Of its three tiers or stages ( for the Viscounts may be regarded as only a Higher division of the Barons , and the Marquises as a subordinate kind of Dukes ) , the lowest is pearly twice as spacious as the one next above it , and the latter three times as spacious as
the his ? nest . At present the number of English Barons and Viscounts is about two hundred and twenty , that of the Earls about one hundred and twenty , that of the Dukes and Marquises about forty . Above two hundred and fifty English peerages were conferred in the reign of George the Third , but only three of them were Dukedoms . From the accession of George the Second , indeed , to the present day , a period of more than a hundred and twenty years ( if we except the variation of the Newcastle patent in 1756 ) , only six hereditary Dukedoms have been created , and of these , one ( that of Montagu ) is already extinct . Of nearly two hundred and seventy Irish peers made in the reign of George the Third , only one was a Duke .
" There are several examples of persons rising from the condition of commoners , without the direct aid of claims derived from birth , to the summit of the peerage ; but in almost all such cases , at least in modern times , there has been either a basis of noble extraction to begin with , or some other kind of connection equally or still more potential . The Protector Somerset , who , from a private gentleman , was made first a Viscbunt , then an Earl , and finally a Duke , was the brother-in-law of one King , and the uncle of another . Villiers , who in the next century , being originally a commoner , was in like manner created successively a Viscount , an Earl , a Marquis , and a Duke , was the all-potent favourite of a third King . If the General of the Restoration , George Monk , was at that extraordinary crisis all at once made a Baron ,
an Earl , and a Duke , it was by one whom he may almost be said to have made a king . The great Marlborough was probably , in part at least , indebted for his first step hi the peerage to the circumstance of his sister being the king ' s mistress . Sir Hugh Smithson , the founder of the Dukedom of Northumberland , owed his elevation , first to an Earldom , and afterwards to his higher title , to his having married the heiress of the Percys . Even our own Wellington , all whose honours have been so well won , though he remained a commoner till he was past forty , to find himself a Duke before he was five years older , was born the son of an Irish Earl , and had an elder brother , who , preceding him in the acquisition of uninherited distinction , had already risen to be an English Marquis . "
Let us repeat the remark with which we began . Our national history is a field in which wonders are yet to be accomplished ; whole tons of history are now lying rotting in our public and private libraries , and in our national muniment-rooms ; and . all that is wanting is that , by public authority , a band of conscientious and able pioneers should be marched , with reasonable salaries guaranteed them , into the heart of this chaos of deeds and documents . At the head of such a band we should be glad to see a man of such tried strength and ability as G . Xi . Craik .
sketch of " the Poltimore Bamfyldes ; after which comes a long and perfect biography of the famous " Countess of Clifford ; " then there follow notices of " Sir Stephen Fox , " of " the Founder of the House of Phipps , " of " the Founder of the House of Petty , " of Percy the Trunkmaker , " the claimant of the Earldom of Northumberland ; of " the Heiress of the Percies , " and of " Anne , Duchess of Buccleugh , " the wife of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth . In such a series of sketches there is romantic interest enough to carry on the mere reader for pleasure , while the
effect of such a train of biographical illustration carried through the seventeenth century is to illuminate a host of collateral facts and obscurities , and to give the genuine enquirer a large access of true historical insight . Wo would mention in particular the sketch of " Sir Stephen Fox" as a specimen of the manner in which accuracy of research and reference may be so wielded by its possessor as to secure at the uame time the effect of picturesque narrative and distinct portrait-painting . All in all , however , the story of Anne Clifford is perhaps , on account of its subject , the most valuable part of the volume .
Iteferring readers to the volume itself for a farther idea of its contents , we will present but one extract , the interest of which is of a peculiarly general kind , premising that such passages of general observation and reflection arc frequent in the volume . Mr . Craik thus preludes his sketch of " the Ducal Osbornes" : — " It might seem to be only the natural course of things ,
or what we should expect to happen not unfrequently , that the man who has risen ( otherwise than by succession ) from being a commoner to be a peer should afterwards make his way from the lowest to the highest rank in the prcrajre . The same impulse or buoyancy , whatever it may have consisted in , or come of , whether extraordinary turrit uiid srrvicts , or persevering ambition , or consummate drxtoritv and insinuation , or mere good fortune ,
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goethe's dramas . The Dramatic Works of Goethe : comprising " Faust , " "Iphigenia , " " Tasso , " Egmont . " Translated by Anna Swanwick , and Goetz von Berliuliingcu translated by Sir Walter Scott , carefully revised . ( Bolm ' s Standard Library . ) II . G . Bonn . Cervantes truly enough expresses the difference between a poem and its translation , by calling the latter the reverse side of tapestry . Yet , although translation is a hopeless task if anything like adequacy
be attempted , although it is wholly impossible to form a correct idea of a poem in its beauty , its magic , its influence upon the mind , by any version in prose or metre , there is still much to be said in favour of translations . If the tapestry be viewed from the wrong side , the colours blurred and faded , the long ends of the silk interfering with the delicate lines of the picture , yet the design is seen , and the colours too . We cannot estimate the skill of the artist ; but
we can get at something of his meaning . Taking all difficulties into consideration , this volume of Goethe ' s principal dramatic works deserves high praise . Miss Swanwick is a careful and elegant translator . That she has not " Learned his great language—caught hi 3 clear accents , " is no reproach , or it is one shared by every translator under the sun ; i'or there will as soon be another Goethe us a translator echo the marvellous music of his lyre . But she h&s accomplished a very difficult task with more than usual success . Her
version of " Faust , " coining after so many m prose and metre is really excellent ; and yet , if one wanted an illustration of the vanity of translations , the ?• Faust" would furnish if ; . We are uttering the sentiment of every competent pirson , we believe , in saying , that the profound and subtle , no less than the
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952 ® t ) e 3 L $ atjet . [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 28, 1850, page 952, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1863/page/16/
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