Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/25

Rh it may be a matter of surprise that, though a very sonorous language, it cannot be termed a rich one. Abounding in long words (sesquipedalia verba), it loses in precision and strength what is gained in sound, and thus the ideas are encumbered when simplification was required. The comparatively monosyllabic character of the English language has in this respect an immense advantage for the translator, as it enables him to give the sentiments of the original more concisely than one from it into another. Having also more synonyms with different shades of meaning, a greater precision may be lost or gained, according to the circumstances and the judgement applied to them. Thus a translation may sometimes be even superior to the original, from its giving the ideas more distinctly, and as it is the test of good writing to find how it reads in another language, so with really superior authors it may be a matter of little importance in what version their thoughts are expressed. "Words are the daughters of earth, but thoughts are the sons of heaven." It is not presumed hereby that the following translations all come under this consideration, but with the advantages above expressed, it may be hoped that, as exotics in a greenhouse, these flowers of Spanish poetry may be found pleasing representations of what they were in their native soil, even if they cannot be made entirely denizens of our own.

Differing entirely from those writers who suppose that the best days of Spanish literature have gone by, and believing, on the contrary, that it never has been more truly original and flourishing than during the present and preceding ages, it might be justly considered presumptuous in any new author to present such opinions to the world without showing the grounds on which they were founded. Bouterwek and his copyist, Sismondi, together with their criticisms on the several Spanish poets, contented themselves with giving merely a few