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ii in no one intance, I would uffer my repect for Kotzebue to interfere with my profound repect for the judgment of a Britih audience. But I flatter myelf uch a vindication is not requiite to the enlightened reader, who, I trut, on comparing this drama with the original, will at once ee all my motives—and the dull admirer of mere verbal tranlation, it would be vain to endeavour to inpire with tate by intruction.

Wholly unacquainted with the German language, a literal tranlation of the “Child of Love” was given to me by the manager of Covent Garden Theatre to be fitted, as my opinion hould direct, for his tage. This tranlation, tedious and vapid as mot literal tranlations are, had the peculiar diadvantage of having been put into our language by a German—of coure it came to me in broken Englih. It was no light mifortune to have an example of bad grammar, fale metaphors and imilies, with all the uual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, didaining the contruction of entences,—the precie decorum of the cold grammarian,—he has caught the pirit of her author,—if, in every altered cene,—till adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and till keeping in view his great catatrophe,—he has agitated her audience with all the various paions he depicted, the rigid criticim of the cloet will be but a lender abatement of the pleaure reulting from the anction of an applauding theatre.

It has not been one of the leat gratifications I have received from the ucces of this play, that the original German, from which it is taken, was printed in the year 1791; and yet, that during all the period which has intervened, no peron of talents