Si n'avez point encore tendre amourette,

De tel repos, beau gars, n'ayez souci ;
Trop tôt viendra jour piteux, ou fillette
A vous pauvret fera crier merci :

Le sçais par moi ce que vous dis ici:
Tout comme vous desirai Bachelette,
Que bien aimasse et qui m'aimât aussi ;
Or, que m'est il provenu de ceci ?

Pleurai longtems, longtems contai fleurette,
Et puis au bout, suis devenu mari.

Bibliotheque des Amans, par M. SYLVAIN M.... Paris.

If the above is capable of a translation which should do it justice, it must be done by a skilful imitation of its antiquated language; and by the pen of a Pope, or a Hawkins Browne *.

*The ingenious author of A Pipe of Tobacco, in imitation of the manner of six different English poets; and yet more distinguished for his admirable poem, De Immortalitate Animi, -one of the best specimens of the Latin poetry of the moderns,

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CHAPTER XII.

Difficulty of translating Don Quixote, from its Idiomatic Phraseology.-Of the best Translations of that Romance,-Comparison of the Translation by Motteux with that by Smollet.

THERE

HERE is perhaps no book to which it is more difficult to do perfect justice in a translation than the Don Quixote of Cervantes. This difficulty arises from the extreme frequency of its idiomatic phrases. As the Spanish language is in itself highly idiomatical, even the narrative part of the book is on that account difficult; but the colloquial part is studiously filled with idioms, as one of the principal characters continually expresses

himself in proverbs. Of this work there have been many English translations, executed, as may be supposed, with various degrees of merit. The two best of these, in my opinion, are the translations of Motteux and Smollet, both of them writers eminently well qualified for the task they undertook. It will not be foreign to the purpose of this Essay, If I shall here make a short comparative estimate of the merit of these translations *.

Smollet inherited from nature a strong sense of ridicule, a great fund of original humour, and a happy versatility of talent, by which he could accommodate his style to almost every species of writing. He could adopt alternately the solemn, the lively, the sarcastic, the burlesque, and the vul

* The translation published by Motteux bears, in the title-page, that it is the work of several hands; but as of these Mr Motteux was the principal, and revised and corrected the parts that were translated by others, which indeed we have no means of discriminating from his own, I shall, in the following comparison, speak of him as the author of the whole work.

gar. To these qualifications he joined an inventive genius, and a vigorous imagination. As he possessed talents equal to the composition of original works of the same species with the romance of Cervantes; so it is not perhaps possible to conceive a writer more completely qualified to give a perfect translation of that romance.

Motteur, with no great abilities as an original writer, appears to me to have been endowed with a strong perception of the ridiculous in human character; a just discernment of the weaknesses and follies of mankind. He seems likewise to have had a great command of the various styles which are accommodated to the expression both of grave burlesque, and of low humour. Inferior to Smollet in inventive genius, he seems to have equalled him in every quality which was essentially requisite to a translator of Don Quixote. It may therefore be supposed, that the contest between them will be nearly equal, and the question of preference very difficult to be decided. It would have been so, had Smollet confided in his