It is indeed most desirable to have the gift of tongues, though the "myriad-minded" man had but that of his own. There are people who can parley all the European languages, even like so many natives, and read you off-hand any strange-looking page, be it even MS., you can submit to their eyes. Yet, we believe, they always most feelingly understand the "old familiar faces" of the words they got by heart in lisping them, and that became a part of their being, not by process of study, but by that seeming inspiration, through which childhood is ever joyfully acquiring multifarious lore in the spirit of love. In waking and sleeping dreams we speak our mother tongue. In it we make love—in it we say our prayers. Had he lived till he was fourscore, John Leyden, in the dotage of genius, would have maundered by the banks of the Ganges in the Doric that charmed his ears among the murmurs of the Teviot. Heaven bless the man who invented Translation! Heaven bless Translators all—especially those who give us in English all thoughts, rich and rare, that took life in foreign attire, and continue to charm human hearts, and souls, and minds, in a change of light that shows them sometimes even more beautiful than when first they had a place among airy creatures!
But methinks we hear some wiseacre, who is no wizard, exclaim:—"Oh! to be enjoyed, it must be read in the original!" What! the Bible? You have no Hebrew, and little Greek, but surely you sometimes dip into the Old and into the New Testament.
To treat the question more argumentatively, let Prose Composition be divided into History, Philosophy, Oratory. In History, Translation—say into English—is easiest, and in all cases practicable. The information transferred is the chief thing asked, even if Style be lost—with some writers a small, with others no doubt a considerable, with a few a great loss. But the facts, that is, the events, and all the characters too, can be turned over, although one finer historical fact—the spirit of the country and time, as breathing in the very Style of the artist, may, yet need not, evaporate. The Translator, however, should be himself an historian or antiquary, and should confine himself—as, indeed, if left to himself he will do—to the nation in whose fate he happens to have had awakened in him—by influences hard to tell, and perhaps to himself unknown—the perpetual interest of a sympathy that endears to him, above all others, that especial region, and the ages that like shadows have passed over it.
In Philosophy, the Translator's task is harder, and it is higher; but its accomplishment is open to the zealous lover of truth. The whole philosophy must be thoroughly possessed by him, or meanings will be lost from, or imposed on, the author—cases fatal both. Besides, of all writers, a philosopher most collects extensive and penetrating theories into chosen words. No dictionary—the soul only of the philosopher interprets these words. In the new language, you must have great power and mastery to seize equivalents if there; if not, to create them, or to extricate yourself with circumlocutions that do not bewilder or mislead—precise and exquisite. Have we, in our language, many, any such Translations? Not Taylor's or Sydenham's Plato—not Gillies's Aristotle. Coleridge is dead—but De Quincey is alive.
In Oratory, the Style is all in all. It is the ipsissimus homo. He who "wielded at will that fierce democratic," does not appear unless the thunder growl and the lightning dazzle. From what hand shall it fulmine over England as over Greece? Yet the matter, the facts, the order, the logic, are all easily enough to be transferred—not the passion and the splendour, except by an orator, and even hardly by him; but Brougham has grappled manfully with Demosthenes, though he hath somewhat diminished the power of the Crown.
But in Poetry. Ay, there the difficulties grow—there all are collected—and one equal to all, or nearly so, is added—Verse! Of all writers, the poet is the most exquisite in his words. His creations revolve in them—live in them—breathe and burn. Shakspeare expresses this—"the poet's pen turns them to shape." Ariel, and Lear, and Hamlet, are not except in the very words—their very own words. For the poet, of all men, feels most susceptibly, sensitively, perceptively, acutely, accurately, clearly, tenderly, kindly—the contact of his mind with yours; and the words are the medium of contact! Yet, most of the Iliad may be transferred—for it is a history. The manners are easily depicted in a Translation—so is the wonderful thinking that remains to us therein from that remote lost world—and makes the substratum of the poem. In short, that old world which Homer preserves, can be shown in a Translation, but not Homer himself. The simplicity, and sweetness, and majesty, and the musical soul and art, require Greek, and old Greek. A translation into Attic Greek by Sophocles, would not be Homer. Into modern English? Alas, and alack-a-day! An English translator might better undertake Euripides than Sophocles, and Sophocles than Æschylus. Æschylus, Pindar, Homer—these are the three terrors of Translation. Why? They are doubly so remote! Distant so far, and distant so high! We should not, ourselves, much care for undertaking Apollonius Rhodius, and Callimachus, although the Alexandrian schoolmaster abounds in the poetical riches of the Greek tongue, and the Cyrenaic hymnist has an unattainable spirit of grace and elastic step. Yet we could, with a safe conscience, try; because if less glory be attempted by the translator, less can be lost for his original. Whereas, if we let down Homer, Pindar, Æschylus, we are lowering the heights of the human spirit—crimen læsœ majestatis. In poetry the absolutely creative power of the human spirit—that immense endowment and privilege of the human being—is at its height. Many view this endowment and privilege with scepticism—renouncing their own glory—denying themselves. Therefore, it is always important, in civilized times, that the majesty and might of poetry be sustained—surrounded by a body-guard of opinion. In rude times it can take good care of itself. Then the king walks among the people safe in their faith and love. Now you tremble to diminish the reverence of that creation. But courage! All cannot read Greek, and they are, as fellow men of Homer, entitled to as much of him as they can get. Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, all taken together, impress an Englishman (Scotsman included) who is no Grecian, with a belief in greatness. And then for the perpetual feeding of his faith he has his own Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton.
Translation, you see then, O gracious perusers! has divers motives. One is ambitious. It is to help in giving the poet his due fame, and that is a motive honourably sprung, since it comes of the belief that the poet belongs to the species at large; and that accordingly his praise has not had its full reverberation, until it has rebounded from all hearts. Of the same impulse, but dealing justice in another direction, is the wish that the less learned shall not, from that accident, forfeit their share of the common patrimony; and that surely is among the best of all reasons. A peculiar sort of zeal is to cultivate the vernacular literature by transplanting the great works of other more happily cultivated languages, as we naturalize fair and useful exotics. This is an early thought, and goes off as the country advances. Probably the different reasons of Translation would affect, even materially, the characters of Translation; or at least, if they coexist, the predominance of one over the other moving causes. The different purposes will even give different orders of Translators. To undertake to aid in diffusing the version of Homer to the ends of the West, would ask an Englishman tolerably confident in his own powers. It breathed in the fiery spirit of George Chapman, who having rolled out the Iliad in our stateliest numbers, the Odyssey in more moderate strain, and finally dispatched the Homeric Minora, begins his own Epilogue of three consecutive labours, with
"The work that I WAS BORN TO DO IS DONE!"
A little reflection will suggest to many a wishing Translator, that HE is in danger of rather doing injustice to the celebrity of an admired original. Incapables! refrain, desist, be dumb.
The use of Translations to the literature that has received them has been questioned. The native genius and energies of a country may, it has been feared, be oppressed by the importation of wealth and luxuries. The Hygeian maxim to remain poor for the sake of health and strength, is hard to act upon. In another sense, we might rather look upon the introduced strangers as dangerous rivals, who rouse us to woo with better devotion, and so are useful. Besides, it looks like a timid policy to refuse to know what our fellows have done. Milton was not subdued, but inflamed, by conversing with all the great originals. Burns did not the less Dorically tune his reed, because Pope had sounded in his ear echoes of the Scamandrian trumpet-blast. The truer and more encouraging doctrine rather seems to be, that if the land has in its mould the right nurture of genius, genius will strike its roots, and lift its flowers. In the mean time, it is to be considered, against such a policy of jealous protection, that not the influence on the vernacular literature is the first legitimate claim, but the gain of enlightenment for the human mind, intent upon enlarging itself by bringing under ken every where that which itself has been, and that which itself has done every where.