Page:The Enchanted Knights; or The Chronicle of the Three Sisters.djvu/7



all works rendered from the German into the English tongue, the adaptation must necessarily lose much of the beauty of the original, the language of this Country being too weak and barren to convey to the mind of the reader the delicate metaphor, and redundant sentences of the German. The translator has however as closely as possible followed the style of the German, and if his readers should remark a somewhat strange expression of thought, action, or idea, they must attribute this, which may be considered a fault in English Literature, solely to his desire to make the work what in truth every translation ought to be, a faithful reflection of the original.

The translator of the “Enchanted Knights,” and of the “Demon of the ring,” need offer no reasons for introducing to the English public two of the best tales of one of the most renowned writers of fiction and legendary romance that even Germany, so prolifick in works of imagination and ghostliness, ever produced.