Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler Woodhouselee

“ Sensible of this truth, many of the prose translators of poetry, have attempted to give a sort of measure to their prose, which removes it from the nature of ordinary language. If this measure is uniform, and its return regular, the composition is no longer prose, but blank-verse. If it is not uniform, and does not regularly return upon the ear, the composition will be more unharmonious, than if the measure had been entirely neglected. Of this, Mr. Macpherson’s translation of the Iliad is a strong example.
But it is not only by the measure that poetry is distinguishable from prose. ”

“ This admirable translation falls short of its original only in a single particular, the measure of the verse. One striking beauty of the original, is the easy and loose structure of the verse, which has little else to distinguish it from animated discourse but the harmony of the syllables; and hence it has more of natural impassioned eloquence, than is conveyed by the regular measure of the translation. ”

“ We have observed, in the preceding part of this essay, that poetical translation is less subjected to restraint than prose translation, and allows more of the freedom of original composition. It will hence follow, that to exercise this freedom with propriety, a translator must have the talent of original composition in poetry; and therefore, that in this species of translation, the possession of a genius akin to that of his author, is more essentially necessary than in any other. ”

“ Neither was it the want of genius, or of poetical talents; for Voltaire is certainly one of the best poets, and one of the greatest ornaments of the drama. But it was the original difference of his genius and that of Shakespeare, increased by the general opposition of the national character of the French and English. His mind, accustomed to connect all ideas of dramatic sublimity or beauty with regular design and perfect symmetry of composition, could not comprehend this union of the great and beautiful with irregularity of structure and partial disproportion. ”

“ Lord, Sir, I see you keep up your old merry humour still; you love dearly to rally and break a jest. Well, but have you got a [30] noble supper for us, and plenty of delicious inspiring claret? Hark ye, Timon, I’ve got a virgin-song for ye, just new composed, and smells of the gamut: ’Twill make your heart dance within you, old boy. A very pretty she-player, I vow to Gad, that I have an interest in, taught it me this morning.”
There is both ease and spirit in this translation; but the licence which the translator has assumed, of superadding to the ideas of the original, is beyond all bounds. ”

“ Motteux, with no great abilities as an original writer, appears to me to have been endowed with a strong perception of the ridiculous in human character; a just discernment of the weaknesses and follies of mankind. He seems likewise to have had a great command of the various styles which are accommodated to the expression both of grave burlesque, and of low humour. Inferior to Smollet in inventive genius, he seems to have equalled him in every quality which was essentially requisite to a translator of Don Quixote. ”

“ The more he studies a scrupulous imitation, the less his copy will reflect the ease and spirit of the original. How then shall a translator accomplish this difficult union of ease with fidelity? To use a bold expression, he must adopt the very soul of his author, which must speak through his own organs. ”

“ Where the sense of an author is doubtful, and where more than one meaning can be given to the same passage or expression, (which, by the way, is always a defect in composition) , the translator is called upon to exercise his judgement, and to select that meaning which is most consonant to the train of thought in the whole [18] passage, or to the author’s usual mode of thinking, and of expressing himself. To imitate the obscurity or ambiguity of the original, is a fault; and it is still a greater, to give more than one meaning, as D’Alembert has done in the beginning of the Preface of Tacitus. ”

“ Cotton’s and Scarron’s Virgil entertain but for a few pages: the composition soon becomes tedious, and at length disgusting. We laugh at a short exhibition of buffoonery; but we cannot endure a man, who, with good talents, is constantly playing the fool.
There is a species of ludicrous verse translation which is not of the nature of Travesty, and which seems to be regulated by all the laws of serious translation. It is employed upon a ludicrous original, and its purpose is not to burlesque, but to represent it with the utmost fidelity. ”

“ This last is the fault of the French translations of D’Ablancourt, an author otherwise of very high merit. His versions are admirable, so long as we forbear to compare them with the originals; they are models of ease, of elegance, and perspicuity; but he has considered these qualities as the primary requisites of translation, and both the sense and manner of his originals are sacrificed, without scruple, to their attainment. ”

“ That a superior degree of liberty is allowed to a poetical translator in amplifying, retrenching from, and embellishing his original, than to a prose translator. For without some portion of this liberty, there can be no ease of composition; and where the greatest liberty is allowable, there that ease will be most apparent, as it is less difficult to attain to it.
For the same reason, among the different species of poetical composition, the lyric is that which allows of the greatest liberty in translation; as a freedom both of thought and expression is agreeable to its character. ”

“ Still further, it may be observed, that as there are certain species of poetical composition, as, for example, the dramatic, which, though of the same general character in all nations, will take a strong tincture of difference from the manners of a country, or the peculiar genius of a people; so it will be found, that a poet, eminent as an original author in his own country, may fail remarkably in attempting to convey, by a translation, an idea of the merits of a foreign work which is tinctured by the national genius of the country which produced it. ”

“ Reading them, one learns as much by dissenting from some of his judgments as by subscribing to others. Woodhouselee, Lord Cockburn said, was not a Tusculum, but it was a country-house with a fine tradition of culture, and its quondam master was a delightful host, with whom it was a memorable experience to spend an evening discussing the Don Quixote of Motteux and of Smollett, or how to capture the aroma of Virgil in an English medium, in the era before the Scottish prose Homer had changed the literary perspective north of the Tweed. ”

“ As all wit consists in unexpected combinations, the singular union of a philosophic thought with a lively fancy, which is a very uncommon association, seems in general to be the basis of the wit of Voltaire. It is of a very different species from that wit which is associated with humour, which is exercised in presenting odd, extravagant, but natural views of human character, and which forms the essence of ludicrous composition. The novels of Voltaire have no other scope than to illustrate certain philosophical doctrines, or to expose certain philosophical errors ”

“ Unless he is possessed of the most correct taste, he will be in continual danger of presenting an exaggerated picture or a caricatura of his original. The distinction between good and bad writing is often of so very slender a nature, and the shadowing of difference so extremely delicate, that a very nice perception alone can at all [75] times define the limits. Thus, in the hands of some translators, who have discernment to perceive the general character of their author’s style, but want this correctness of taste, the grave style of the original becomes heavy and formal in the translation ”

“ Il faut donc prendre garde qu’on ne fasse perdre la grace à son auteur par trop de scrupule, et que de peur de lui manquer de foi en quelque chose, on ne lui soit infidèle en tout: principalement, quand on fait un ouvrage qui doit tenir lieu de l’original, et qu’on ne travaille pas pour faire entendre aux jeunes gens le Grec ou le Latin. Car on fait que les expressions hardies ne sont point exactes, parce que la justesse est ennemie de la grandeur, comme il se voit dans la peinture et dans l’ecriture ”

“ To the moderns the art of translation is of greater importance than it was to the ancients, in the same proportion that the great mass of ancient and of modern literature, accumulated up to the present times, bears to the general stock of learning in the most enlightened periods of antiquity. ”

“ The union of just and delicate sentiments with simplicity of expression, is more rarely found in poetical composition than in prose; because the enthusiasm of poetry prompts rather to what is brilliant than what is just, and is always led to clothe its conceptions in that species of figurative language which is very opposite to simplicity. ”

“ There is perhaps no department of literature which has been less the object of cultivation, than the Art of Translating. Even among the ancients, who seem to have had a very just idea of its importance, and who have accordingly ranked it among the most useful branches of literary education, we meet with no attempt to unfold the principles of this art, or to reduce it to rules. In the works of Quinctilian, of Cicero, and of the Younger Pliny, we find many passages which prove that these authors had made translation their peculiar study ”

“ Didactic poetry, of which the principal merit consists in the detail of a regular system, or in rational precepts which flow from each other in a connected train of thought, will evidently suffer least by being transfused into prose. But every didactic poet judiciously enriches his work with such ornaments as are not strictly attached to his subject. In a prose translation of such a poem, all that [110] is strictly systematic or preceptive may be transfused with propriety; all the rest, which belongs to embellishment, will be found impertinent and out of place. ”

“ I shall in this chapter touch upon several other characteristics of composition, which, in proportion as they are found in original works, serve greatly to enhance the difficulty of doing complete justice to them in a translation.
1. The poets, in all languages, have a licence peculiar to themselves, of employing a mode of expression very remote from the diction of prose, and still more from that of ordinary speech. Under this licence, it is customary for them to use antiquated terms, to invent new ones, and to employ a glowing and rapturous phraseology, or what Cicero terms Verba ardentia. ”

“ When we review what has been doing in the world, is it not evident, that in all transactions, whether of ancient or of modern date, some strange caprice of fortune turns all human wisdom to a jest? In the [102] juncture before us, Claudius figured so little on the stage of public business, that there was scarce a man in Rome, who did not seem, by the voice of fame and the wishes of the people, designed for the sovereign power, rather than the very person, whom fate, in that instant, cherished in obscurity, to make him, at a future period, master of the Roman world. ”

“ In order that the mimickry may be understood, it is necessary that the writer choose, for the exercise of his talents, a work that is well known, and of great reputation. Whether that reputation is deserved or unjust, the work may be equally the subject of burlesque imitation. If it has been the subject of general, but undeserved praise, a Parody or a Travesty is then a fair satire on the false taste of the original author, and his admirers, and we are pleased to see both become the objects of a just castigation. ”

“ But to this we answer, that Fenelon, in composing his Telemachus, has judiciously adopted nothing more of the characteristics of poetry than what might safely be given to a prose composition. His good taste prescribed to him certain limits, which he was under no necessity of transgressing. But a translator is not left to a similar freedom of judgement: he must follow the footsteps of his original. Fenelon’s Epic Poem is of a very different character from the Iliad, the Æneid, or the Gierusalemme Liberata. ”

“ It would be extremely difficult to attain, in any translation, the laconic brevity with which this story is told. There is not a single word which can be termed superfluous; yet there is nothing wanting to complete the effect of the picture. The gravity, likewise, of the narrative when applied to describe an action of the most consummate absurdity; the self-important, but anxious questions, and the mortifying dryness of the answers, furnish an example of a delicate species of humour, which cannot easily be conveyed by corresponding terms in another language. ”

“ But this very circumstance has thrown the practice of translation into mean and mercenary hands. It is a profession which, it is generally believed, may be exercised with a very small portion of genius or abilities. [5] “It seems to me,” says Dryden, “that the true reason why we have so few versions that are tolerable, is, because there are so few who have all the talents requisite for translation, and that there is so little praise and small encouragement for so considerable a part of learning” (Pref. to Ovid’s Epistles) . ”