sustained facility to the abrupt action and widely varying emotion of the original. The one finally selected, which is essentially the same as that employed by Mr. William Morris in the "Earthly Paradise," seemed to me on the whole best adapted to the purposes of English narrative-verse.[1]
And in general with regard to this matter of adhering to the metre of the original in poetical translations, I suspect it to be imperative chiefly in lyric poetry or where the two languages are near akin. I have never yet seen a German metre which could not, by means of a little patience and ingenuity, be transferred to English; but with the liquid, lingering rhythm of the Latin tongues it is quite otherwise. There the genius of our language is defied, and it is useless rebelling against philological fate. I cannot better illustrate than by a reference to Mr. Duffield's laborious, and, in
- ↑ I subjoin the opening stanzas of the poem in Provençal, and my own attempt to imitate their metre, premising, for the benefit of the unskilled, that in Provençal every letter sounds,—the vowels as in French, while of the consonants g and j before e and i are pronounced like ds, and ch always like ts. A final vowel is elided, in scanning, before another vowel; and the tonic accent is strongly marked.
Cante uno chato de Prouvènço,
Dins lis amour de la jouvènço,
A travès da la Crau, vers la mar, dins li bla,
Umble escoulan d'ou grand Oumero,
Iéu la vole segui. Coume èro
Rèn qu'uno chato de Prouvènço,
En foro de la Crau se n'es gaire parla.
