Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/27

 of Charite—good fortune seemed to wait upon the Ass, and his mistress promised him hay enough for a Bactrian camel (fænum camelo Bactrinæ sufficiens): a promise misinterpreted by a masterpiece of grotesquerie into 'she would call me her little camell.' With his very easy baggage of Latin, the translator lost the point of every Sprichwort, and turned the literary allusion into nonsense. In the phrase non cervam pro virgine sed hominem pro homine, the reference to Iphigenia is patent, and yet our excellent Adlington gets no nearer the truth than 'not a servant for his maidens, but rather an Asse for himselfe.'

So much must be said in dispraise of what after all is a masterpiece of prose. The translator, said Dr. Johnson, 'is to exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress as the author would have given them had his language been English. Now, Adlington has failed, with the rest of the world, to reach this high standard. Under no conceivable circumstances could Apuleius have written in his terms and with his significance. For the perfect translation a knowledge of two languages is necessary. The modern translator is commonly endowed with a complete apprehension of Latin or Greek, and is withal lamentably ignorant of English. Adlington, on the other hand, was sadly to seek in Latin, but he more than atoned for his slender knowledge by an admirable treatment of his own language. Though he abandoned the colour and variety of Apuleius, he turned his author into as handsome a piece of prose as you are like to meet. From the first page to the last you will not find a trace of foreign idiom. The result is not so much a fine translation as a noble original, fitted to endure by