in no one inſtance, I would ſuffer my reſpect for Kotzebue to interfere with my profound reſpect for the judgment of a Britiſh audience. But I flatter myſelf ſuch a vindication is not requiſite to the enlightened reader, who, I truſt, on comparing this drama with the original, will at once ſee all my motives—and the dull admirer of mere verbal tranſlation, it would be vain to endeavour to inſpire with taſte by inſtruction.
Wholly unacquainted with the German language, a literal tranſlation of the “Child of Love” was given to me by the manager of Covent Garden Theatre to be fitted, as my opinion ſhould direct, for his ſtage. This tranſlation, tedious and vapid as moſt literal tranſlations are, had the peculiar diſadvantage of having been put into our language by a German—of courſe it came to me in broken Engliſh. It was no ſlight miſfortune to have an example of bad grammar, falſe metaphors and ſimilies, with all the uſual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, diſdaining the conſtruction of ſentences,—the preciſe decorum of the cold grammarian,—ſhe has caught the ſpirit of her author,—if, in every altered ſcene,—ſtill adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and ſtill keeping in view his great cataſtrophe,—ſhe has agitated her audience with all the various paſſions he depicted, the rigid criticiſm of the cloſet will be but a ſlender abatement of the pleaſure reſulting from the ſanction of an applauding theatre.
It has not been one of the leaſt gratifications I have received from the ſucceſs of this play, that the original German, from which it is taken, was printed in the year 1791; and yet, that during all the period which has intervened, no perſon of
