the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other hand, there exist
in these plays more individual beauties, more passages whose excellence
will bear reflection than in the former productions of Schiller. The
description of the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the Young
Lover, which follow it, form in the original a fine poem; and my
translation must have been wretched indeed if it can have wholly
overclouded the beauties of the scene in the first act of the first play
between Questenberg, Max, and Octavio Piccolomini. If we except the
scene of the setting sun in the Robbers, I know of no part in Schiller's
plays which equals the first scene of the fifth act of the concluding
plays. [In this edition, scene iii., act v.] It would be unbecoming in
me to be more diffuse on this subject. A translator stands connected
with the original author by a certain law of subordination which makes it
more decorous to point out excellences than defects; indeed, he is not
likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his
own labor will mingle with the feelings that arise from an afterview of
the original. Even in the first perusal of a work in any foreign
language which we understand, we are apt to attribute to it more
excellence than it really possesses from our own pleasurable sense of
difficulty overcome without effort. Translation of poetry into poetry is
difficult, because the translator must give a brilliancy to his language
without that warmth of original conception from which such brilliancy
would follow of its own accord. But the translator of a living author is
incumbered with additional inconveniences. If he render his original
faithfully as to the sense of each passage, he must necessarily destroy a
considerable portion of the spirit; if he endeavor to give a work
executed according to laws of compensation he subjects himself to
imputations of vanity or misrepresentation. I have thought it my duty to
remain bound by the sense of my original with as few exceptions as the
nature of the languages rendered possible. S. T. C.