CHORUS.
"Holy, holy, holy! Praise—
Praise be His in every land;
Safety in His presence stays;
Sacred is His high command!"
Dr. Bowring's version,—though a good one, if the difficulty be considered of giving back a piece of poetry, whose every word is a poem in itself, and by whose rhyme and accentuation a feeling of indescribable awe is instilled into the most fastidious reader's mind,—Dr. Bowring's version is but a feeble reverberation of the holy fire pervading our Dutch poet's anthem. But still there rests enough in his copy to give one a high idea of the original. I borrow the same Englishman's words when I add:—
"The criticism that instructs, even though it instructs severely, is most salutary and most valuable. It is of the criticism that insults, and while it insults, informs not, that we have a right to complain."—Batavian Anthology, p. 6.
Janus Dousa.
Manpadt House.