richness, in compact adjustment of parts, and in pure intelligence, none
of the living languages can be compared with it,--not even our German,
which is divided even as we are divided, and which must cast off many
imperfections before it can boldly enter on its career."--_Ueber den
Ursprung der Sprache_.

The difficulties in the way of a nearly literal translation of _Faust_
in the original metres have been exaggerated, because certain affinities
between the two languages have not been properly considered. With all
the splendor of versification in the work, it contains but few metres of
which the English tongue is not equally capable. Hood has familiarized
us with dactylic (triple) rhymes, and they are remarkably abundant and
skillful in Mr. Lowell's "Fable for the Critics": even the unrhymed
iambic hexameter of the _Helena_ occurs now and then in Milton's _Samson
Agonistes_. It is true that the metrical foot into which the German
language most naturally falls is the _trochaic_, while in English it is
the _iambic_: it is true that German is rich, involved, and tolerant of
new combinations, while English is simple, direct, and rather shy of
compounds; but precisely these differences are so modified in the German
of _Faust_ that there is a mutual approach of the two languages. In
_Faust_, the iambic measure predominates; the style is compact; the many
licenses which the author allows himself are all directed towards a
shorter mode of construction. On the other hand, English metre compels
the use of inversions, admits many verbal liberties prohibited to prose,
and so inclines towards various flexible features of its sister-tongue
that many lines of _Faust_ may be repeated in English without the
slightest change of meaning, measure, or rhyme. There are words, it is
true, with so delicate a bloom upon them that it can in no wise be
preserved; but even such words will always lose less when they carry
with them their rhythmical atmosphere. The flow of Goethe's verse is