Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/18

xii life, yet stamped with the inalienable dignity of high literary descent. M. Mistral seldom reminds us of any other author. When he does, it is of the greatest. Vincen and Mirèio occasionally recall Romeo and Juliet; but only, it may be, through their youth, their abandon, their southern precocity, and their similar misfortunes, while their passion has far more of childlike innocence than that of the immortal lovers of Verona. And if it seem, at first sight, audacious in our author to declare himself even a humble pupil of Homer, it should be remembered that, in one respect at least,—Matthew Arnold would call it a capital one,—he signally justifies the pretension. Lively and simple,—whether by instinct or by art,—he is invariably noble. How far I have been able to preserve these traits in the ensuing version the reader shall decide.

I must, however, hasten to disclaim any thing approaching to a critical knowledge of the rich and charming Provençal dialect,—or rather language, for it is more than a dialect. I know it only through a close comparison of the original "Mirèio" with the parallel French version before mentioned, assisted by occasional references to Raynouard's "Résumé de la Grammaire Romaine." I had first learned to admire "Mirèio" through the English prose-version of Mr. C H. Grant, to which I feel myself not a little indebted. In artlessness of narrative, in vigor and felicity of