Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

godfather at hand: and yet their single appellation is bound to comprise as many public interests, as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest: it is to be expressive: it is to be new it is to be striking: it is to have something in it equally intelligible to the man of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagination :-in a word, it is to be impossible.

How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy nonentity, we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realize ;- -a great deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do any thing for a book but give it a title; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chair-shaking merriment which he himself might have joined in, fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that exquisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare:

One rubbed his elbow, thus; and fleered, and swore
A better speech was never spoke before:

Another, with his finger and his thumb,

Cried" Via! We will do't, come what will come !"
The third he capered, and cried "All goes well!"
The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell.
With that they all did tumble on the ground,
With such a zealous laughter, so profound,
That in this spleen ridiculous, appears,

To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears.
LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

[ocr errors]

Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as the Adviser, or Helps for Composing;-the Cheap Reflector, or Every Man His Own LookingGlass; the Retailer, or Every Man His Own Other Man's Wit;-Nonsense, To be continued. Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion ;-Chaos, or the Agreeable Miscellany;-the Fugitive Guide;-the Foot Soldier, or Flowers of Wit;-Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor;-the Polite Repository of Abuse; -Blood, being a Collection of Light Essays. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the Pleasing Ancestor; the Silent Companion; the Tart; the Leg of Beef, by a Layman; the Ingenious Hatband; the Boots of Bliss; the Occasional Diner; the Tooth-ache; Recollections of a Very Unpleasant Nature; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of Snuffers; Thoughts on a Barouche-box; Thoughts on a Hill of Considerable Eminence; Meditations on a Pleasing Idea; Materials for Drinking; the Knocker, No. 1;-the Hippopotamus entered at Stationers' Hall; the Piano-forte of Paulus Æmilius; the Seven Sleepers at Cards; the Arabian Nights on Horseback-with an infinite number of other mortal mur. ders of common sense, which rose to " push us from our stools," and which none but the wise or goodnatured would think of enjoying.

II. A WORD ON TRANSLATION FROM THE
POETS.

INTELLIGENT men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theocritus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have often wondered how those writers obtained their glory. And they well might. The translations are no more like the original, than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same with the versions of Euripides, of Eschylus, of Sophocles, of Petrarch, of Boileau, &c. &c., and in many respects of Homer. Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than by selecting a well-known passage from Shakspeare, and turning it into the common-place kind of poetry that flourished so widely among us till of late years. Take the passage, for instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat themselves on a bank by moonlight :

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Now a foreign translator, of the ordinary kind, would dilute and take all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, in a style somewhat like the following:

With what a charm, the moon, serene and bright,
Lends on the bank its soft reflected light!

Sit we, I pray; and let us sweetly hear
The strains melodious with a raptured ear;
For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour,
To harmony impart divinest power.

III.-AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRESMANTLE-PIECES-APARTMENTS FOR STUDY.

How pleasant it is to have fires again! We have not time to regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the necessity of a new kind of warmth; -a warmth not so fine as sunshine, but, as manners go, more sociable. The English get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer-shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought; our climate seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, when it really becomes so: but for the same reason, we make as much of our winter, as the anti-social habits that have grown upon us from other causes will allow. And for a similar reason, the southern European is unprepared for a cold day. The houses in many parts of Italy are summer-houses, unprepared for winter; so that when a fit of cold weather comes, the dismayed inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a little brazier in his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and perplexity. A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of every thing out of

doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses drip like rain, would admonish him to get warm in good earnest. If "the web of our life" is always to be "of a mingled yarn," a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture.

Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books on each side. What shall we do? Shall we take out a Life of somebody, or a Theocritus, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Montaigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Moliere, or Shakspeare who includes them all? Or shall we read an engraving from Poussin or Raphael? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our wrists upon our knees, and toasting the up-turned palms of our hands, while we discourse of manners and of man's heart and hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and goodnature, that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-intentioned, and the good-natured.

Ah-take care. You see what that old-looking saucer is, with a handle to it? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, which may have been worth to an Athenian, about two-pence; but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could-deny for it. And yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his imagination more than ever it fetched potter or penny-maker. Its little shallow circle overflows for him with the milk and honey of a thousand pleasant associations. This is one of the uses of having mantle-pieces. You may often see on no very rich mantle-piece a representative body of all the elements

« ПредишнаНапред »