Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now.
Milton’s Comus.
2. There is nothing more difficult to imitate successfully in a translation than that species of composition which conveys just, simple, and natural thoughts, in plain, unaffected, and perfectly appropriate terms; and which rejects all those aucupia sermonis, those lenocinia verborum, which constitute what is properly termed florid writing. It is much easier to imitate in a translation that kind of composition (provided it be at all intelligible),[64] which is brilliant and rhetorical, which employs frequent antitheses, allusions, similes, metaphors, than it is to give a perfect copy of just, apposite, and natural sentiments, which are clothed in pure and simple language: For the former characters are strong and prominent, and therefore easily caught; whereas the latter have no striking attractions, their merit eludes altogether the general observation, and is discernible only to the most correct and chastened taste.
It would be difficult to approach to the beautiful simplicity of expression of the following passages, in any translation.
“In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature, not to go out to see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.” Milton’s Tract of Education.
“Can I be made capable of such great expectations, which those animals know nothing of, (happier by far in this regard than I am, if we must die alike), only to be disappointed at last? Thus placed, just upon the confines of another, better world, and fed with hopes of penetrating into it, and enjoying it, only to make a short appearance here, and then to be shut out and totally sunk? Must I then, when I bid my last farewell to these walks, when I close these lids, and yonder blue regions and all this scene darken upon me and go out; must I then only serve to furnish dust to be mingled with the ashes of these herds and plants, or with this dirt under my feet? Have I been set so far above them in life, only to be levelled with them at death?” Wollaston’s Rel. of Nature, sect. ix.
3. 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. It is natural, therefore, to conclude, that in those few instances which are to be found of a chastened simplicity of thought and expression in poetry, the difficulty of transfusing the same character into a translation will be great, in proportion to the difficulty of attaining it in the original. Of this character are the following beautiful passages from Chaulieu:
Fontenay, lieu délicieux