Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/321

304 talons," has wholly disappeared. The graphic description of 'the ghastly descent down the high step-ladders, through the vacant dank chambers of the tower,' is pared down to the inexpressive and partly incorrect translation, "Shuddering with cold (!!) they descended the long ladder (instead of "ladders"), through the empty dark (instead of "dank") descent: " can any thing be poorer or more clumsy? Again, that beautiful image in which "the heavy stroke of the iron pendulum " is compared to the "mowing to and fro of the iron scythe of time suspended from the clock, " how it is marred! The pendulum, indeed, is said to be "swinging here and there"(!!) and something is said about "the mowing of the scythe of time;" but not a word to indicate that the pendulum itself is "the iron scythe of time suspended from the clock;" in lieu of which we have the translator's gloss, "that carried on the decrees of destiny, " which no doubt he thought mighty fine, and a considerable help to unimaginative readers. Further on, where the reader of the original almost hears " the lonesome noise (Gepolter) of the nine living footsteps," the translator, losing sight of the "noise" altogether, substitutes the epithet "careful," the most inappropriate of all the epithets he could have chosen, because conveying a precisely contrary idea; while the wholly superfluous information that "they descended through the descent," does not indemnify the reader for the loss of the contrast between the dead stillness of the lonesome tower before described, and the "living footsteps." Then what intolerable bungling in the startling description of the effects of the lantern, as it swings in the keeper's hand, in the highest gallery, and casts "strange gleams of light into the pews below, " instead of which, we are told of its " light struggling in the upper darkness," and "shedding a sepulchral light upon the living," of all which stuff there is not a syllable in the original. And what becomes of those uncomfortable tenants of the church, "the livid corpses in the pews and in the pulpit," that congregation of the dead conjured up by Walt's fears and the poet's fancy? Are we to take "the sepulchral light shed upon the living, " as an equivalent for that also! Again, how is the poetic bloom taken off from the image which represents the soul of the dying man above, as "flitting through the church in a pallid glance," instead of which he is made in downright prose to "pass through as a pale ghost!" And why are the epithets "frightful" and "dusky" omitted, in describing the notary as chased (not "haunted") through the land of shadows and terrors, by all the circumstances before described, as by "a frightful dream?" And last, not least, what a lamentable falling off in the closing sentence! Jean Paul's description of "the open starry sky," we seek in vain in the translation; and so we do Jean