"When the second saw her lying, This Bent down, and kissed the maiden 'To thee the dearest homage I gave, which heart can pay; the yearnings of his own heart, of his country, and of his age, for "Freedom and Right." It will be perceived, that in the "Garland of Glory," wherewith the coming time is to be adorned, "the Shamrock of Erin" is not forgotten. May it be a true prophecy! "Oh, think not she sleepeth with those who have perish'd "Till Victory's sunburst shall flash o'er our standard, "Let this, too, inspire us - they never were flying Oh! let but one ray of that meteor of wonder, Burst in through the darkness of slavery's night; "Yes! your banner of crimson floats broad in the vanward, For the motto emblazon'd on Liberty's standard, "Though many a heart that now throbs shall be lying This noble ballad, which may be considered | least, as Germany is concerned, in another the cosmopolitan theory or creed of Freedom, is poem, which Mr. Boyd has also translated very reduced to very intelligible practice, as far, at spiritedly. Although we have already extracted Such of our readers as would wish to compare Mangan's version of this celebrated song with the foregoing, will find it in the number of our Magazine for October, 1841 ; it will amply repay the trouble of the search. Having expressed our opinion of some of Mr. Boyd's predecessors in the pleasant region of translation, and given to our readers a few of the fruits of his experience, and the results of those principles by which he has been guided, we think it only fair that he should be allowed to express his own opinions upon these matters in his own words: "Most of the translations with which I am acquainted," says Mr. Boyd, in his preface, "are, in my humble judgment, either too literal or too obscure. In some, the original is followedword for word, and line for line with an accuracy so excruciating,' that the sense is diluted, and the poem rendered perfectly distasteful to the English reader. Literal translation, especially in poetry, I hold to be impracticable, and the worst of all translators those who pride themselves the most upon a strict adherence to the original: in others, the orignal is lost sight of altogether, new thoughts and new images are introduced, always to the detriment of the piece; and with the exception of the poems of Schiller, which have been translated by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, with a fidelity and a beauty which cannot be surpassed, and can only be appreciated by those who know the difficulty of understanding this Author - most of the translators have fallen into one or other of these errors. "In this volume, it has been my endeavour to avoid both extremes. Whether the attempt is fated to be successful, remains to be decided. The object of a translator ought to be, to express himself as nearly as possible in the words which the poet would have adopted, had he been writing in the language into which the translation is made. I do not pretend to intrude these poems on the public as literal translations, but I have not marred their beauty by introducing thoughts which they do not contain. He who would translate well, ought, after reading the poem, to close the book, and then, having reflected upon the subject, endeavour to clothe the ideas in the language into which he translates; if he is able to adopt the cadence and the rhythm of the original, so much the better. "It is the opinion of Schlegel that verse translation should be nearer than paraphrase, but less close to it than metaphrase. I quote from memory, but this is the sum and substance of that great critic's maxim; it is, at all events, that by which I have been guided." Without stopping to question the accuracy of this quotation from Schlegel, which, however, sounds to us more like one of the oracular dogmas of "glorious John," the English translator of Virgil, than the matured opinion of that great German translator as well as critic, whose own rendering of Shakespeare and Calderon might be termed metaphrastic, if, owing to the inferiority of the English to the German language as a medium of translation, we had not become habituated to connect a want of spirit and poetic harmony with this phrase. Without dwelling on this particular observation, we beg leave to express our dissent from the too-sweeping condemnation which our author has passed upon literal translations. Even in the English language, with which he had principally to do, and which, from its comparative want of flexibility and copiousness, presents very great difficulties to the translator as well from the ancient classic languages of Europe, as from the modern Italian, Spanish, and German, we think the attempt has been made with complete success. If Mr. Boyd will look into the translation of 'Ariosto' by Mr. Rose, already mentioned, he will find the "soft bastard Latin" of the Orlando "done into" very legitimate and literal English, without any of that "excruciating" torture which he conceives the process necessarily demands. Even the old translation by Harrington, which, however, does little more than preserve the outward form of the original, is better than that by Hoole, which seems written in accordance with the rule laid down by our author, and which to all, ex cept the "mere" English reader, is awfully and | Homer-painted or gilded casts from the antremendously unendurable. The attentive pe- tique, instead of bronze or marble facsimiles. In rusal of Mr. Rose's work, side by side with the German, which, Mr. Boyd must be well aware, original, has convinced us that English transla- is so rich in translations, conscientiously and tors have indolently exaggerated difficulties that scrupulously literal, the very reverse of the rule industry and a due reverence for their subject laid down in his preface, would seem to be the might have overcome. Instead of reproducing one that guided the great masters of translation some great foreign work for the admiration of in that language. However, as Mr. Boyd's their countrymen, with the coloring and shad- practice is so much better than his precept, and ing, the proportions, and the perspective of the as "the right to differ" is not exclusively the original, they have adopted a new standard alto- privilege of Irish politicians, we shall not further gether-changed the character of the composi- press our own views upon the subject, but take tion, and altered its tone, much in the way that leave of our author and his very beautiful a Chinese painter would copy a Canaletti. And volume, with the following lively poem from thus we have "elegant mistakes," like Pope's Goethe: "Our festive assemblies we held in this place, When, your castle forsaking, to war you had gone; We thought that our revels we still might hold on. The Count, through his dream, as he lay at his ease, "In an instant, three horsemen, who rode on before, Comic elves of this miniature nation; It has been our reproach among the nations that we are not an artistic people. We may, if we please, mutter the name of Flaxman, and declare this a slander; or we may invent new canons of criticism, to prove that there has been no legitimate development of Art out of our own country. But a more candid course will be to admit that we are not an artistic people; or, if we be potentially, yet that "it hath not appeared." We may find some solace under the mortification incident to such an avowal, in considering the disadvantages under which Art has labored in this country. They have been many; but the most important has been the difficulty of popularising it, owing to certain conditions of our climate, religion, and social habitudes. In Greece and in Italy, manners, religion, climate, all combined to give popular interest to Art. If the metopes of the Parthenon had suffered from no other cause than exposure to the atmosphere for two thousand years, upon the Acropolis of Athens, they would appear in a much more perfect state than we find them in now; and frescoes on the fronts of Italian palaces have borne the rains of three or four centuries, yet are fresh at this day. Greek temples were, as Italian churches are, shrines where the people bowed down and worshipped the work of the chisel or the pencil; and the streets, the squares of Rome and Florence, are, as those of Athens were, galleries of Art in its various developments. In our own climate, marble and fresco do not bear exposure to the weather; and to introduce a picture into a church is regarded as a “removing of the landmarks" of purified Christianity. Art, therefore, is driven to asylums where it must be sought out; it does not obtrude itself upon us; and does not present itself in any of the climate makes us domestic rather than sociable; our public ways are at once too busy and too dingy to encourage our converting them into galleries of Art; we have nothing in common but wood pavements and bituminous footways. We must have our pictures and our statues about us, we must have them in our studies and our parlours. They help to make our rooms look comfortable. But however sufficient artistic genius may prove, to meet the requirements of a people who club their wants, what amount would furnish supply where each individual makes separate demand? The desire must remain unsatisfied; the cost of production could not be so reduced as to put it in the power of all to gratify their tastes; nor could talent enough be drawn to unless the genius of a people, so differing in their requirements from the old creative nations, solve the problem by some new development of productive skill. We must manufacture Art. those forms that necessarily give it a place in the mind and heart of the people. It must be introduced to them under some other conditions than served to popularise it in Southern Europe, if ever it is to be truly loved by them, and exert an influence upon them. It must adapt itself, indeed, to the genius and circumstances of the nation. Englishmen live by fire-sides; not in fora and piazze: they visit their churches to seat themselves in snug pews; not to wander about and make themselves cool with cold marble and dark shade. For them the huge fresco must be exchanged for the cabinet picture; and the colossal god must be dwarfed down into the lar. The Greek sculptor wrought for the Athenian people - for Greece - for the world - for all time this he felt; and the inspiration was proportioned to such consciousness. The Eng-gether to execute works of a creditable kind; lish sculptor works for Lord this or Lady that, whose flunkies will have opportunity to study his productions at leisure. The Italian painter wrought for galleries, through which a broad stream of life, swollen by tributaries from all parts of Europe, would be constantly pouring. The English painter works for drawing-rooms, muslined up during six months in the year, and open, during the other six months, to a "very select set," few among whom descend to the vulgarity of examining the "furniture" of the walls. How should English Art, then, attain to the excellence, the dignity, of Art in Italy and in Ancient Greece? When we think how the products of the patient labor of genius are destined among ourselves to be withdrawn from the world, we scarcely can wish, much less hope, that it should do so. The great works of genius are the treasures of the world, and belong to the abstract MAN as his own triumphs. It were better they should not exist at all, than that they should exist only for the few; for the latter alternative would be an outrage on the rights of the many. Far be it from us, however, to assert that it is undesirable Art should advance in this country. We say only that it should be popularised, so that all should be benefited by its advance; and we believe that it is only by becoming a thing for the people that it can attain to the full excellence which English genius may be capable of reaching. But, we repeat, popularised it cannot be by the means which popularised it in Italy and Greece. In the South, the people live out of their houses, and have drawing-rooms and corridors in common, ceiled with the blue heaven, and called squares and streets. There they have their works of Art about them; works upon a grandiose scale, to suit with galleries so wide and lofty: works in which all have equal property. In England we live within doors; The words do not sound well. They seem to involve an union of incongruities. But they would have sounded worse five years ago. Since that time" Art Manufactures" have made great advance; and we may say of them now, in the same confidence with which we should speak of the future progress of science, that much greater advance are they destined yet to make. Some of the early essays were unsatisfactory, not only as being necessarily imperfect in execution, but as designed upon false principles. Such were the attempts at manufacturing Gothic enrichments for our churches, without regard to some essential proprieties of relation between material and the figures it was made to assume: as when particular forms of panelling, which were developments of the constructive capabilities of wood, were imitated, without modification, in cast iron, a substance wherein their significance was lost. But mistakes such as this, and a certain mechanical hardness in most early attempts at Art Manufacture, led many to too hasty a conclusion that there was a fixed incompatibility between Art in its higher sense, and the rapid processes of the manufactory. A little reflection would have shown this conclusion to be unfounded; for we have long had an illustration of the powers of Art Manufacture in the various means by which pictures, reduced from color into light and shade, are multiplied ad infinitum. We are in the habit, and justly, of classing engravings in all its varieties— wood-cutting, lithography among the Fine A ts; yet all these are but methods of manufacturing pictures. -- Sculpture, too, has had its multiplying processes; but they have not been so satisfactory |