rangement of words laid before us, we immediately hold that the rhyme is miserably beaten; consequently that the artist's will is a baffled nonentity—that the rhyme, instead of standing forth as the representative of his will, victorious in the midst of all obstacles, does, in fact, represent nothing whatsoever; but hangs as a clog upon his composition, lending to it additional disfigurement. In this case the reader is at once off from the bargain. The artist's work is hateful to him, and his rhymes make it only still more detestable.
Woe, therefore, to the poet who, in the exercise of his vocation, invades the sequence in which words naturally arrange themselves in his vernacular tongue, or violates in any other way the correct conversational usages of speech. When we consented to tolerate his rhymes, we understood him to come under a contract to exhibit to us the element for the sake of which we agreed to put up with them. and moreover to exhibit it to us faithfully. But will can only be exhibited to us faithfully, or as a real existence, when we see it exercising a consummate mastery over all its materials, the feelings, the passions, and above all the language of humanity—voluntarily, and for the sake of declaring its own reality, multiplying the difficulties of the latter, and at the same time preserving all its proper usages entire. But now, in perverting the idiom of speech, the artist has broken through this contract. Woe, therefore, to him; for from henceforth he is a literary outcast. Poetry casts him off, and plain prose turns her back upon the rhyming drudge.
On the other hand, whenever we find any real ingredient of humanity fairly and fully represented in language, our gratification is extreme. When, therefore, the artist proves the reality and supremacy of his will, and represents this in true and bright colours, by introducing rhyme into language without violating any correct customary norma loquendi, any rule of pure idiomatic discourse—running along the whole compass of speech—in no respect altering its natural tenor, but tipping its points with emphasis and fire; then, but only then, do we hail his performances with delight. He has now put forward his volition as a real permanent and victorious existence—he has faithfully represented that which, as we have already said, is the differential or peculiar ingredient of poetical genius. Having deserted nature for the purpose of finding an articulate voice for an element not supplied by nature, and for which her language afforded no utterance—to wit, his own will—he has again returned into the bosom nature with his found treasure, (rhyme, namely,) and he will violate her prerogatives no more. On the contrary, glorying and proud in the freedom of his self-imposed fetters, he will prove his mastery over her language by walking in all its usual ordinances more strictly and blamelessly than before. He, and he alone, who conceives his vocation in this spirit, is the true poetical artist. And now we have answered, as far as our present limits permit, the question we have been engaged upon, and have shown how and why rhyme ever comes to give us pleasure.
We must now turn to the translations before us. If tried by the principles we have been contending for, we think that there is hardly a page in any one of them that could for a moment stand—so barbarous and often so ludicrous are the stratagems they play off upon language, and also upon thought, for the sake of hitching in their rhymes. Perhaps we have been uttering hard sayings—perhaps it may be thought that a poetical translation of any work upon the terms we propose, is altogether an impossible achievement. Perhaps it may be; but if it is, then we think it better that there should be no poetical translations, than that they should be obtained at the sacrifice of the conditions we have stated; for, if purchased at this price, they can never be any thing but burdens and encumbrances upon the literature of the country which imports them. To make amends, however, for our strictness on this point, and by way of encouraging future translators of "Faust," or any similar work, we may add, that we are inclined to accord to them much greater latitude in translating than they are generally supposed entitled to exercise. There are occasions upon which they cannot adhere too closely to the text of their author; but in general we should allow them to take what liberties they pleased with his mere words, and to deviate from him as widely as they chose, provided they
