I have discovered a poem by this great poet, which has escaped the
researches of all his editors. Prefixed to a translation, translation is
the theme; with us an unvalued art, because our translators have usually
been the jobbers of booksellers; but no inglorious one among our French
and Italian rivals. In this poem, if the reader's ear be guided by the
compressed sense of the massive lines, he may feel a rhythm which,
should they be read like our modern metre, he will find wanting; here
the fulness of the thoughts forms their own cadences. The mind is
musical as well as the ear. One verse running into another, and the
sense often closing in the middle of a line, is the Club of Hercules;
Dryden sometimes succeeded in it, Churchill abused it, and Cowper
attempted to revive it. Great force of thought only can wield this
verse.
_On the_ AUTHOR, WORKE, _and_ TRANSLATOR, _prefixed to the translation
of Mateo Alemans's Spanish Rogue_, 1623.
Who tracks this author's or translator's pen
Shall finde, that either hath read bookes, and men:
To say but one were single. Then it chimes,
When the old words doe strike on the new times,
As in this Spanish Proteus; who, though writ
But in one tongue, was formed with the world's wit:
And hath the noblest marke of a good booke,
That an ill man dares not securely looke
Upon it, but will loath, or let it passe,
As a deformed face doth a true glasse.
Such bookes deserve translators of like coate
As was the genius wherewith they were wrote;
And this hath met that one, that may be stil'd
More than the foster-father of this child;
For though Spaine gave him his first ayre and vogue
He would be call'd, henceforth, _the English rogue_,
But that hee's too well suted, in a cloth
Finer than was his Spanish, if my oath
Will be receiv'd in court; if not, would I
Had cloath'd him so! Here's all I can supply
To your desert who have done it, friend! And this
Faire aemulation, and no envy is;
When you behold me wish myselfe, the man
That would have done, that, which you only can!
BEN JONSON.
The translator of _Guzman_ was James Mabbe, which he disguised under the
Spanish pseudonym of _Diego Puede-ser_; _Diego_ for _James_, and
_Puede-ser_ for _Mabbe_ or _May-be_! He translated, with the same spirit
as his Guzman, _Celestina, or the Spanish Bawd_, that singular
tragi-comedy,--a version still more remarkable. He had resided a
considerable time in Spain, and was a perfect master of both
languages,--a rare talent in a translator; and the consequence is, that
he is a translator of genius.