Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/36

 earlier generation. In judging whether his English rendering left on the minds of English readers the same impression as the original had left on its "natural hearers", he had a court of appeal always available; and, while the English reader is "lulled into the illusion that he is reading an original work", the foreign author can testify to the fidelity with which his text has been followed and his spirit reproduced. "What a magnificent translation The Tour is!" Couperus writes; "what a most charming little book it has become! I am in raptures over it and have read it and reread it all day and have had tears in my eyes and have laughed over it. You may think it silly of me to say all this; but it has become an exquisitely beautiful work in its English form. My warmest congratulations!"

To achieve this illusion, Teixeira began his literary life with the most essential quality of a translator: an equal knowledge of the language that was to be translated and of the language into which he was translating it. English and Dutch came to him by inheritance; French and Flemish, German and