Page:TheBirth of the War-God.djvu/9

Rh offered to the general reader, in an English dress, will not diminish this reputation is the translator's earnest hope, yet my admiration of the grace and beauty that pervade so much of the work must not allow me to deny that occasionally, even in the noble Sanskrit, if we judge him by an European standard, is bald and prosaic. Nor is this a defence of the Translator at the expense of the Poet—fully am I conscious how far I am from being able adequately to reproduce the fanciful creation of the sweet singer of ; that numerous beauties of thought and expression I may have past by, mistaken, marred; that in many of the more elaborate descriptions, my own versification is 'harsh as the jarring of a tuneless chord' compared with the melody of 's rhythm, to rival whose sweetness and purity of language, so admirably adapted to the soft repose and celestial, rosy hue of his pictures, would have tried all the fertility of resource, the artistic skill, and the exquisite ear of the author of himself. I do not think this Poem deserves, and I am sure it will not obtain, that admiration which the Author's masterpieces already made known at once commanded; at all events, if the work itself is not inferior, it has not enjoyed the good fortune of having a or  for Translator.