ITALIAN-ENGLISH, GERMAN-ENGLISH, AND THE REFUGEE STYLE.
(Vol. vii., p. 149.)
Every one has admired the odd bits of Italian-English which "N. & Q." lately published, a true
philological curiosity. Such queer medleys have been the result whenever two opposite idioms have been thrown together and unskilfully stirred up. Very few foreigners indeed, Sclavonic nations being excepted, and particularly the Russians, write French tolerably well. The present Lord Mahon and Lady Montaigne, in an excellent Essay on Marriage, are exceptions to the rule. Voltaire used to say,—
"Faites tous vos vers à Paris;
Et n'allez pas en Allemagne!"
And very right he was. His kingly disciple committed more than once such Irish rhymes as these:
"Je vais cueillir dans leurs sentiers (des Muses)
De fraîches et charmantes roses;
Et je dédaigne les lauriers,
En exceptant les lauriers sauces."
Forgetting the difference of pronunciation between the soft s of rose (roze) and the lisping sound of the c in sauce (sôss). As I have not by me the ponderous and voluminous works of the poetical monarch, I may have altered some of the words of the quotation; but the rhymes sauce and rose I aver to be true to the primitive copy. Even Protestant refugees, born of French parents, brought up amongst their co-religionists and countrymen, wrote a strange gibberish, often ungrammatical, always unidiomatic, of which traces may be found even in Basnage and Ancillon. A recent French theologian, the clever author of a Life of Spinosa, written in Germany and published in Paris with some success, has such expressions as these:
"Les villes protestantes preferent la liberté avec Calvin QUE la tyrannique concorde avec Luther."—Hist. Crit. du Rationalisme, p. 49.
"Et ailleuz: Stuttgard Dontil etait conservateur DE LA Bibliothèque."-Ib.
And M. Amand Saintes is a Frenchman, and a most erudite man. The Celebrated Frau Bettina von Arnim, who dared to translate into English and to print in Berlin (apud Trowitzsch and Son, 1838), under the new title of Diary of a Child, her own untranslateable letters to Göthe, had at least the very good excuse of her nationality for her peculiar English, the choicest, funniest, maddest, and saddest English ever penned on this planet or in any other, and of which I hope "N. & Q." will accept some small specimens, taken at random among thousands such. To begin with the opening address:
"To the English Bards.
"Gentlemen!—The noble cup of your mellifluous tongue so often brimmed with immortality, here filled with odd but pure and fiery draught, do not refuse to taste if you relish its spirit to be homefelt, though not home-born."
"Bettina Arnim."
We will next pass to the "Preamble":
"The translating of Göthe's Correspondence with a Child into English was generally disapproved of. Previous to its publication in Germany, the well-renowned Mrs. Austin, by regard for the great German poet, proposed to translate it; but after having perused it with attention, the literate and the most famed bookseller of London thought unadvisable the publication of a book that in every way widely differed from the spirit and feelings of the English, and therefore it could not be depended upon for exciting their interest. Mrs. Austin, by her gracious mind to comply with my wishes, proposed to publish some fragments of it, but as no musician ever likes to have only those passages of his composition executed that blandish the ear, I likewise refused my assent to the maiming of a work, that not by my own merit, but by chance and nature became a work of art, that only in the untouched development of its genius might judiciously be enjoyed and appraised."
Our next and last is taken from p. 133.:
"From those venturesome and spirit-night-wanderings I came home with garments wet with melted snow; they believed I had been in the garden. When night I forgot all; on the next evening at the same time it came back to my mind, and the fear too I had suffered; I could not conceive, how I had ventured to walk alone on that desolate road in the night, and to stay on such a waste dreadful spot; I stood leaning at the court gate; to-day it was not so mild and still as yesterday; the gales rose high and roared along; they sighed up at my feet and hastened on yonder side, the fluttering poplars in the garden bowed and flung off their snow-burden, the clouds drove away in a great hurry, what rooted fast wavered yonder, and what could ever be loosened, was swept away by the hastening breezes." (!!!).
P. S.—Excuse my French-English.
Philarète Chasles, Mazarianæus
Paris, Palais de l'Institut.