answers any good purpose, as far as we have ever seen, except that of rhyming with "world." Mr. Blackie must now favour as with a sample and continuation of the passage.
"And ask I still why thrills my heart
With timid beatings and oppress'd?
And why some secret unknown smart
Chills every life-pulse in my breast?
'Stead of the living of Nature,
Where man was placed by his Creator,
Surrounds the moldering dust alone,
The grinning skull and skeleton."
We beg to assure our Southron readers, that, whatever may be the custom in some parts of Scotland, the practice of pronouncing "nature" in such a way as to make it chime symphoniously with "creator," is by no means universal in that country. Carrying on the same passage, let us give Dr. Anster another trial.
"Away, away, and far away!
This book, where secret spells are scann'd,
Traced by Nostradam's own hand
Will be thy strength and stay:
The courses of the stars to thee
No longer are a mystery;
The thoughts of nature thou canst seek,
As spirits with their brothers speak.
It is—it is the sunrise hour
Of thy own being; light, and power,
And fervour to the soul are given,
As proudly it ascends to heaven.
To ponder here o'er spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines;
And from their actual use refrain,
Were time and labour lost in vain.
Then ye whom I feel floating near me,
Spirits, answer, ye who hear me!
"Where secret spells are scann'd." This is an interpolation of the translator, and we think a very unnecessary one. It was quite enough to mention that the book was by Nostradamus—upon that every one must have known that it contained magic "secret spells," and all that sort of thing. It is out of keeping with the character of Faust to make him more minute than this. Besides, the word "scann'd" is another of those that we never yet found answering any good purpose in poetry, and simply because no man ever seriously made use of it in actual life. "To ponder here, &c., were time and labour lost." Here the translator should have stopped, and not added, "in vain." Labour lost is labour lost; but "labour lost in vain," must be labour which the workman has been unsuccessful in losing, and must therefore be labour not lost, or, in other words, must be labour gained, and therefore the translator here says exactly the reverse of what he intends to say.
We will conclude our selections for the present by extracting a few more lines from Mr Birch's translation, it being the latest that has come to hand. After giving vent to what has just been uttered by Dr Anster, Faust throws open the book, and contemplates the sign of the Macrocosm: he proceeds:—
"What rapture flows at this first glance, !
Through all my sense—all my reins!
I feel youth's hallow'd high-day trance
Re-glow throughout my nerves and veins, &c.
I comprehend at length the saying of the seer,—
The world of spirits is not lock'd,
Thy mind is shut, thy heart is dead.
Up, scholar, up! and bathe unshock'd
Thy earthly bosom in the morning's red!' "
"And bathe unshock'd." We confess we have met with nothing in all these translations which has shocked us more than this rhyme. We were hardly prepared for it, even by Mr Talbot's version of the same passage, although we own he had done much to caseharden us. Let us remark in passing that we hardly think it would be safe for any reader to begin the study of these translations, suddenly, with Mr Birch. It would be too much for his nerves, just as it would be too severe upon him to subject him to a shower bath of cold spring water on this, the 14th day of January, unless he were accustomed to it. But let him gradually inure himself, and fortify his habit by commencing with Lord Gower or Dr Anster, and proceeding on through the others; and there is no saying but what he may bring himself in time to stand even Job Crithannah. Here, for example, in the present instance, Mr Talbot is good enough to come forward and give us the thing comparatively tepid:—
"The realm of spirits is never barr'd,
'Tis thy soul that is fetter'd—thy heart that is dead!
Then up, my disciple, and bathe, unscared,
Thy earthly breast in the morning's red!"
What does the reader imagine the original word means, which one of these translators interprets into "unshocked, and the other into "un-
