The compromise just spoken of—and I must bring to an end my story, already too long—consisted in the expenditure of the five-dollar piece in two of the books written by the bestower of that inflammatory coin. I open the volumes of Pendennis and Vanity Fair which have been lying at my elbow, and across the title-page of each I see written, in curiously small and delicate hand, "—— ——, with W. M. Thackeray's kind regards. April, 1856." These were the books.
H. R.
HAMLET IN A FRENCH DRESS.
If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of Hamlet done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work. For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all conscience. Not that his translation is totally devoid of merit. On the contrary, some passages are admirably rendered, and give the sense and sound of the original in a manner really remarkable when the difference between the two languages is considered. But there is such a calm conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible.
For instance, to begin at the beginning, the phrase
Looks it not like the king?
is translated
C'est le roi tout craché.
And in the same scene—
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,