thought proper to vary the expression, and gives us "from seas o'er land, from land o'er ocean," probably for the purpose of showing his great command of language. But we cannot help thinking that his alteration entirely ruins the effect of the line. "In conflict mad engaging." In reading this we feel as if we were setting our foot on a bit of rotten scaffolding, and accordingly withdraw it as quickly as possible, and leap on to the next. But what "deep-laid barriers built by the motions of the storm" may be, is more than we can tell. The original informs us that the restless agency of storms has the greatest possible effect in quickening and forwarding the operations of nature, namely, vegetation and so forth; and there is some sense in that; but in this translation of the passage, there is none. In the last line, the word "tenure" is evidently a mistake for "tenor;" the former signifying the condition upon which any thing is held, the latter its course or going. Such is the manner in which Mr Crithannah "closely imitates Goethe," " approaches to a display of his versi fication," and steers clear of "a cramped verbality." Although mere critics, we think we could do the thing better ourselves, and shall accordingly make the attempt, although in trying to cope with the original, we confess we feel somewhat in the predicament of a pigmy endeavouring to clap the head of a giant. Thunder is rending yonder sky, commences. This strain being finished, the drama The parallel between it and the opening scene in Job (not Crithannah), is still carried on. Mephistopheles comes forward and addresses the Deity, who after some colloquy, asks him, "Do you know Faust?" Now in giving the devil's answer to this question, and the counter-answer which he receives, we perceive that all the translators (Mr Hayward not excepted) have entirely missed the point and spirit of the dia logue. When the Deity asks "Do you know Faust?" - the translators make Mephistopheles rejoin," Do you Do mean Doctor Faust?" as if he required information, as not being sure but what some other Faust might be meant, and to this the Deity is made to reply, "Yes-my servant. you know him?" But in our opinion something far more dramatic and effective than this is conveyed in the original. In answer to the Deity's question, Mephistopheles replies, not enquiringly, but sarcastically, "Oh! you mean the Doctor?"-giving him his nickname in a tone of the bitterest RAPHAEL. The sun is, yonder, leading loud The concert of the starry crowd, And, with a tread of thunder-force, scoffing, which irreverence is immediately and sternly put down by the weighty rebuke, "Meinen knecht," -that is, "He is my servant, mark you, and must, therefore, be spoken of with respect." It is exactly as if one person were to say to another, " Do you know Maginn?" and that other were to rejoin," Oh! to be sure, who does not know the Doctor ?"י Fulfilling his appointed course. The angels gather, while they gaze, There's not one trait of glory dimm'd Since first creation's birth was hymn'd. and were immediately to meet with this rebuff from the first speaker-" I beg you to understand, sir, that he is my most particular friend, and therefore I cannot submit to hear him called disrespectful nicknames." We hope that, in the next translation of Faust, we may see this matter rectified by the light we have here hung out. The rocks are yonder standing fast, And sea and rocks, in endless course, 'Mid racing spheres, are tearing past. MICHAEL. And, yonder, storms in rising wrath That quicken earth through all her pores. The aspiring nature of Faust's desires, and the fruitlessness of his endeavours to get them gratified, are next described by Mephistopheles, whose language is thus interpreted. We quote from Mr Blackie's translation. "His food and drink are of no earthly taste, His restless spirit drives him to the waste, His madness he himself half understands; mands, And every highest joy that earth com tains permission to tempt, and, if he can, to mislead Faust; in short, to work his will upon him, and we are informed of the plan pla he intends to mands; pursue, in words to the following effect: And all that's near, and all that's far, The original of these lines merely informs us that "Faust's food and drink are not earthly;" but the translator adds that they "are of no earthly taste." Now, this is either a desertion of correct colloquial language, or else it signifies that they are of no taste whatsoever an idiom certainly in common use, and which may be exemplified by our saying, that there is no earthly occasion for the present amendment, meaning thereby that there is no occasion whatsoever for it. But this latter interpretation is certainly not what the translator intends us to adopt, and therefore we must pronounce him guilty of employing language not really used by men; or rather (which is worse) of expressing himself in language really used by men when they would denote something different from that which is here intended to be said. " His restless spirit drives him to the waste." This line denotes exactly the opposite of what it ought to express. The true meaning is, that his restless spirit drives him away from the waste, (that is, the waste region in which he feels himself to be,) into the distant or the remote, which he contemplates as presenting scenes far more delightful, and as shining with all the verdure of paradise. "Demands" and "commands," is no rhyme at all; and the word "war," in the last line is, if we may say so, too much of one, for we certainly should not have met with it here unless the word "far" had stood immediately over its head. As it is, the line would be much better without it. In a general point of view we think the whole passage too cumbrous and overloaded, and that it should have come off more lightly, somewhat in this fashion - Mephistopheles loquitur: "As if no common human cheer Would drink the stars, in his career, And earth, with all her pleasures, up. "Like the famous old snake, my next of He shall feed on dust And this brings us to the main body of the work, in which the designs of Mephistopheles are put in execution. The character of Faust has been greatly canvassed, both in this country and in Germany; about as much, perhaps, as that of our own Hamlet. We do not think, therefore, that we have much to add to what has already been said upon the subject. One opinion, however, (that of the late Mr Coleridge, a great authority on such a subject,) we must take this opportunity of dissenting from. Mr Coleridge thought Faust "a failure," (vide Quarterly Review, vol. lii. p. 21.) His reasons for this conclusion are thus stated. "He" (Mr C.) "considered the intended theme to be, the consequences of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge, caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for pure ends, would never produce such a misology; but only a love of it for base and unworthy purposes." Now, with great deference we hold, in opposition to this doctrine, that purity or impurity of ends has nothing whatever to do with the matter; but that what lies at the basis of the conception of Faust, and affords a "sufficient reason" for his misology, is precisely what is here objected to; namely, his love of knowledge for itself-and this baffled. The love of knowledge for some object out of itself-this, and this alone saves most of the world from being plunged into such a misology as his. If all mankind were to indulge in a love of knowledge for itself alone, the world would very soon be peopled with Fausts. Such a love of knowledge exercises itself in speculation merely, and not in action; and if the experiences of purely speculative men were gathered, we think that Mephistopheles then asks and ob- most of them would be found to con fess, bitterly confess, that indulgence in abstract reflective thinking, (whatever effect it may have ultimately upon their nobler genius, supposing them to have one,) in the mean time absolutely kills, or appears to kill, all the minor faculties of the soul- all the lesser genial powers, upon the exercise of which the greater part of human happiness depends. They would own, not without remorse, that pure speculation-that is, knowledge pursued for itself alone has often been tasted by them to be, as Coleridge elsewheresays, the bitterest and rottenest part of the core of the fruit of the forbidden tree. They would confess that they have at times felt philosophic reflection to be nothing less than an absolute refusal, on their parts, to exercise their talents in the manner in which God Almighty intended them to be exercised. Feeling thus, and at the same time baffled in their pursuit, it is no wonder that they should frequently become misologists, and precisely in this predicament, and feeling habitually thus, stands the Faust before us as the true representative of the class of thinkers we are speaking of. If he had loved knowledge for any end but knowledge -if he had loved it for the sake of wealth, for the sake of station, for the sake of power, he would have escaped all this but loving it for no end but itself alone, it has brought him into his present troubles-it is but human nature that it should have done soit has filled him with indignation and remorse; and now, as the devil's prey, he is ready to rush into what he conceives to be the very opposite extreme. His soliloquy at the opening of the drama affords, we think, the best key to his feelings, character, and position; and therefore we shall quote a large portion of it from the translators before us, commenting on their execution of the passage. Our first extract shall be from Dr Anster. TIME.-Night. SCENE-A high-arched narrow Gothic chamber. FAUST at his desk-restless. FAUST. Alas! I have explored Magister, Doctor, and I lead This is a thought which burns into my heart. I have been more acute than all these triflers, Doctors and authors, priests, philosophers; Have sounded all the depths of every science. Scruples, and the perplexity of doubt, Deep truths to others unreveal'd, tor" himself-an LL.D., and therefore, perhaps, he could hardly have been expected to enter completely, or at least con amore, into the spirit of Faust's cruel sarcasm. But the following, we can assure him, is what Faust intends to express---" Here am I," says he, "classed with 'masters, and such scum," (heisse doctor gar,) "and yea with 'doctors' by my soul!" -as if human degradation could not possibly sink lower. To "lead" a person's creed, is hardly an allowable expression: the right word is "to shape." Besides, if used at all, the expression should have been "I have led." Then in the translation a little further down, where Faust says, "I have been more acute than all these triflers," &c., the spirit of the original entirely evaporates. As in the preceding lines we found him ironically classing himself with the doctors of the schools, so here he ought to have been exhibited to us seriously and vehemently asserting his real superiority, and bursting high above them in the native and indignant energy of his soul. "Could dog (were I a dog) so live?" We ask, would any man, even in his most doggish mood, when speaking to himself, have naturally interpolated such a parenthesis as that? Would he not simply have said, as the original says, "not even a dog would endure the life that I am leading?" But we shall make no more remarks upon these lines, as we intend, by and by, to endeavour to illustrate our notion of their spirit by trying our own hand upon the passage, and shall thus give Dr Anster and others an opportunity of retalia ting, which we fear they will be at no loss to do, if they choose to take the trouble, as we all know that practice is very different from theory, and that to preach is one thing, and to perform another. In the mean time we continue the passage, quoting from Mr Birch : "Oh! that thy beams, fair moon, did take a peep For the last time on my sorrow's deep. vain When o'er my books and papers thou Would'st show thy pensive friendly brow. Oh! that I might but calmly tread We need not waste our own time or the reader's, by pausing to criticise such stuff as this. Let us take a peep into some of the other translations. We carry on Faust's soliloquy from the Hon. Mr Talbot's version :"Oh! am I to this dungeon still confined, This cursed dismal hole, alas, Up to the roof in dingy pride! Thi number heir-loom trash, and other useless lumber, In careless heaps together hurl'd This is thy world-oh, to call this a world!" There is no fair rhyme in the iteration "confined" and "find". "worms devour" is a thousand de grees too strong, and does not express the way in which these reptiles per petrate their depredations upon libraries. We think we see them crunching the boards, bolting the bindings, and growling over their prey. "Which, wrapped in smoke-stained paper, tower up to the roof in dingy pride." The books were not wrapped in smokestained paper; the paper was simply that with which the walls of his den were papered. The word "tower" appears to us to be an overcharged expression here, Faust feeling nothing but the crampness of his situation; but a still stronger illustration of vicious poetic diction is presented to our notice in the word " pride." This, if ever there was one, is an instance of language wrested from its proper use; a word denoting a passion of the soul employed to characterise a set of book-shelves! Conceive how the expression would look in German, (in dunkelm Stolze,) or in any other language. " Hurl'd" is generally an unhappy word in poetry, and seldom answers any good purpose, as far as we have ever seen, except that of rhyming to "world." Mr Blackie must now favour us with a sample in continuation of the passage. * We, of course, give Mr Talbot the benefit of his latest emendations by quoting from the second edition of his work. "And ask I still why thrills my heart 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 symphoneously 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! cessful 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 senses-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 This book, where secret spells are scann'd, Thy earthly bosom in the morning's red." Traced by Nostradam's own hand Will be thy strength and stay: No longer are a mystery; The thoughts of nature thou canst seek, Of thy own being; light, and power, "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 unsuc "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 showerbath 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 |