(Vol. vii., p. 149.)
Every one has admired the odd bits of Italian-English which "N. & Q."
lately published, a true {437} philological curiosity. Such queer medleys
have been the result whenever two opposite idioms have been thrown together
and unskilfully stirred up. Very few foreigners indeed, Sclavonic nations
being excepted, and particularly the Russians, write French tolerably well.
The present Lord Mahon and Lady Montaigne, in an excellent _Essay on
Marriage_, are exceptions to the rule. Voltaire used to say,--
"Faites tous vos vers a Paris;
Et n'allez pas en Allemagne!"
And very right he was. His kingly disciple committed more than once such
Irish rhymes as these:
"Je vais cueillir dans leurs sentiers (des Muses)
De fraiches et charmantes roses;
Et je dedaigne les lauriers,
En exceptant les lauriers _sauces_."
Forgetting the difference of pronunciation between the soft _s_ of _rose
(roze)_ and the lisping sound of the _c_ in _sauce (soss)_. As I have not
by me the ponderous and voluminous works of the poetical monarch, I may
have altered some of the words of the quotation; but the rhymes _sauce_ and
_rose_ I aver to be true to the primitive copy. Even Protestant refugees,
born of French parents, brought up amongst their co-religionists and
countrymen, wrote a strange gibberish, often ungrammatical, always
unidiomatic, of which traces may be found even in Basnage and Ancillon. A
recent French theologian, the clever author of a Life of Spinosa, written
in Germany and published in Paris with some success, has such expressions
as these:
"Les villes protestantes preferent la liberte avec Calvin QUE la
tyrannique concorde avec Luther."--_Hist. Crit. du Rationalisme_, p.
49.
"Et ailleuz: Stuttgard Dontil etait conservateur DE LA
Bibliotheque."-_Ib_.
And M. Amand Saintes is a Frenchman, and a most erudite man. The Celebrated
Frau Bettina von Arnim, who dared to translate into English and to print in
Berlin (apud Trowitzsch and Son, 1838), under the new title of _Diary of a
Child_, her own untranslateable letters to Goethe, had at least the very
good excuse of her nationality for her peculiar English, the choicest,
funniest, maddest, and saddest English ever penned on this planet or in any
other, and of which I hope "N. & Q." will accept some small specimens,
taken at random among thousands such. To begin with the opening address:
"_To the English Bards_.
"Gentlemen!--The noble cup of your mellifluous tongue so often brimmed
with immortality, here filled with odd but pure and fiery draught, do
not refuse to taste if you relish its spirit to be homefelt, though not
home-born."
"BETTINA ARNIM."
We will next pass to the "Preamble":
"The translating of Goethe's Correspondence with a Child into English
was generally disapproved of. Previous to its publication in Germany,
the well-renowned Mrs. Austin, by regard for the great German poet,
proposed to translate it; but after having perused it with attention,
the literate and the most famed bookseller of London thought
unadvisable the publication of a book that in every way widely differed
from the spirit and feelings of the English, and therefore it could not
be depended upon for exciting their interest. Mrs. Austin, by her
gracious mind to comply with my wishes, proposed to publish some
fragments of it, but as no musician ever likes to have only those
passages of his composition executed that blandish the ear, I likewise
refused my assent to the maiming of a work, that not by my own merit,
but by chance and nature became a work of art, that only in the
untouched development of its genius might judiciously be enjoyed and
appraised."
Our next and last is taken from p. 133.:
"From those venturesome and spirit-night-wanderings I came home with
garments wet with melted snow; they believed I had been in the garden.
When night I forgot all; on the next evening at the same time it came
back to my mind, and the fear too I had suffered; I could not conceive,
how I had ventured to walk alone on that desolate road in the night,
and to stay on such a waste dreadful spot; I stood leaning at the court
gate; to-day it was not so mild and still as yesterday; the gales rose
high and roared along; they sighed up at my feet and hastened on yonder
side, the fluttering poplars in the garden bowed and flung off their
snow-burden, the clouds drove away in a great hurry, what rooted fast
wavered yonder, and what could ever be loosened, was swept away by the
hastening breezes." (!!!).
P. S.--Excuse my French-English.