ask of us Why explore but one? Why in communications with the stranger should the direction be always from him to us and never from us to him? The species of translation which is known as Composition is accordingly not excluded from my treatment. An adequate exposition of the nature and functions of Translation is impossible without the use of an appropriate nomenclature. This, hitherto lacking, I have endeavoured in some sort to supply. A graver hindrance is in the constant account to be taken of diverse and often conflicting forces which can neither be separated nor harmonised. Translation is in essence a compromise, and its course a zigzag. Its deviations from the straight the Translator with singleness of purpose will reduce to a minimum, while the free 'Verter' with one eye on the reader and the other more than half on himself will be tempted to extend them till they correspond to the large vistas of Beauty and Truth that these obliquities of vision can command. Such a one may 'vert' as much and as freely as he pleases; but if he seeks the humble title of a 'translator' he must change his methods or renounce his claim. The renderings in the Second Part, in number necessarily limited, are offered not as models but as specimens, as essays, not as achievements. As such however they have been subjected to minute and searching criticism; and their maker cannot further improve them. To originality they make no claim, in Retrospective translation a preposterous pretension. But they are none the less independent, and their coincidences with other translations, for example of the Odes of Horace, are coincidences undesigned. Most of the renderings are in verse. But, for the sake of completeness, a few in prose, Greek and Latin, have been appended, and some compositions in Latin, Classical and Modern, subjoined, for the consideration of such as think that Latin is a dead language. These pieces, Latin and Greek, should be read with the pronunciation of the ancients. Those who pronounce them like English barbarians will lose something. They will, for example, miss the point in No. 63, (i) and (ii). Two friends have aided me in giving the book its final form, Dr P. Giles, Master of Emmanuel College, by reading and criticising the first draft of Part I— the addition to pages 24 sqq. of illustrations from Part II is due to a suggestion of his-and Professor G. A. Davies by helpful counsel on points of detail in renderings included in Part II. The translations from Lucan were originally published in the Quarterly Review and some of the Latin and Greek renderings in Cambridge Compositions. These are now reprinted, with certain changes, by permission of Mr John Murray and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press; the English of the poems of the late Dr T. G. Hake is reprinted by the leave of his son Mr H. Wilson Hake and Messrs Chatto and Windus, that of Professor Housman's 'Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries' and of Mr T. C. Lewis's 'Translation from the Persian' by the leave of their authors, and that of D. G. Rossetti's 'Cassandra' by the leave of Messrs Ellis his publishers. To all of these I tender my grateful acknowledge ments. CAMBRIDGE, 18 June, 1922. J. P. POSTGATE. 25 Dryden, 'Scarce the third glass of measured hours' 26 Pollok, Course of Time, 'Nature stood still'. 27 Shakespeare, King Henry V, ‘Therefore doth Heaven divide' 134 38 Dryden, 'A choir of bright beauties' 36 34 Thomas Watson, 'Phœbus delights to view his laurel tree' 35 Shakespeare, 'Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye' The Giaour, 'As rising on its purple wing' 44 Emily Brontë, 'The moon is full this winter night' 45 Robert Bridges, ''Twas midnight and I started' 47 Matthew Arnold, 'Youth rambles on life's arid mount' 48 Orlando Gibbons, 'Fair is the rose' 49 T. Lodge, 'First shall the heavens want starry light' |