Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/26

 Rome, the quiet visitor enjoy the peace of a country-house, Adlington thus heroically misses the mark: 'When the Roman merchants arrive in this city they are gently and quietly entertained, and all that dwell within this province (when they purpose to solace and repose themselves) do come to this city!' Verily there is magnificence (of a kind) in such confusion; and how shall one reproach a translator, upon whom accuracy sets so light a burden? Again, with a sublime recklessness Adlington perverts extorta dentibus ferarum trunca calvaria into 'the jaw-bones and teeth of wilde beasts,' not pausing to consider the mere formality of grammatical concord. And when Fotis relates how Pamphile, having failed to advance her suit by other arts (quod nihil etiam tune in suos amores ceteris artibus promoveret), designs to assume the shape and feathers of a bird, Adlington so carelessly confounds cause and effect as to say that the transformation was intended 'to worke her sorceries on such as she loved.' Tune solus ignoras longe faciliores ad expugnandum domus esse majores? asks one of the robbers; and Adlington, with the twisted cleverness of a fourth form boy, extorts therefrom this platitude: 'Why are you only ignorant that the greater the number is, the sooner they may rob and spoil the house?' When one of Psyche's wicked sisters threatens to go hang herself if Psyche prove the mother of a god (si divini puelli—quod absit—hæc mater audierit, statim me laqueo nexili suspendam), 'if it be a divine babe,' says the sister in the translation, 'and fortune to come to the ears of the mother (as God forbid it should) then may I go and hang my selfe': thus ignorant was our Englishman of the commonest idiom. Once, at the marriage