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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

a natural product of his fatherland. A certain course of education is necessary before an Englishman can appreciate the ‘ox-eye' of Ath ena, before he can see any force in AEneas

being styled ‘father,’ and before he can be lieve in the existence

of an Il Purgatorio.

And I hope the reader will reflect that if the themes of the poems of Homer, Virgil and Dante do not possess many fascinations for Englishmen, how much less likely are the sub jects of the poems of a rude non-European nation to do so. In the second place, the language of Chapman, Connington, and Cary, though undoubtedly very fine, cannot be well supposed to be as good English as Homer's language was good Greek, Virgil's good Latin, and Dante's good Italian. And in my own case, I have keenly and constantly felt, whilst engaged in translating from Tamil popular poems, how utterly impossible it was for me to reproduce the infinite harmonious iteration of sound and sense of the original. I therefore have to ask the reader to judge merely of the poetical thoughts in Tamil popular poetry from my translation ; for, if he wishes to ascertain

the beauty of the language, he must go to the original and to that alone. But it has sometimes been considered that there is one certain advantage, amongst many dis

advantages, resulting from the judgment of a poet's writings being based upon their accurate transla tion, and not upon his writings in the original. Without adopting any of the various defini tions of poetry, let us consider for a moment what pleases us in any writing and forces our intellectual discriminative faculties to pronounce

it poetry. The prime source of pleasure always ought to be the thoughts contained in the writ ing—“ thoughts that shake mankind,”—origi nal, deep, suggestive, and sublime thoughts, thoughts fanciful, playful, or grotesque, thoughts that cheer or thoughts that elevate,_ thoughts that in any way exercise a vis medicinæ on the mind of the reader. Such ought to be the prime source of pleasure : but in a great measure it is not.

Englishmen

now-a-days

seem to prefer sound to sense. If a man can dress a trite thought in a novel manner he is a poet.

The mysterious utterances of the Del

phic Oracle of the past were nothing to the ambiguous phraseology patronized by the Ros settis and Swinburnes of the present. Extra ordinary involutions of style, bristling with me taphor and glittering with rhyme, constitute

[APRIL 5, 1872

‘ poetic diction.” It appears to be the aim of most modern English poets to say a thing “not only as it never has been said before,

but as no one else would have been likely to think of saying it.” Even a real thinker, like Browning, often clothes his thoughts in language which is anything but plain English. Thus the vicious taste is daily gaining ground in England of regarding the dress more than the person, poetic phraseology more than poetic thought.

But let one of our English poets be translat ed into a foreign language, or better still, into English prose, and the real value of his writings will be at once apparent. In the crucible of translation all petty adornments of rhyme and

rhythm are separated, like dross, from the pure precious metal of the thought. The thought remains, and the reader is obliged to judge by it, and by it alone, of the value of the poet's work, and his real position as one of the sweet singers of the world. “Dryden said of Shakes peare, that if his embroideries were burnt down, there would be silver at the bottom of the melting pot.” Göethe says: —“I honour both rhythm and rhyme, by which poetry first becomes poetry; but the properly deep and radical operative—the truly developing and quickening —is that which remains of the poet when he is translated into prose. The inward substance then remains in its purity and fulness ; which, when it is absent, a dazzling exterior often deludes with semblance of, and when it is present, conceals.”

But, on the other hand, it cannot for a mo ment be denied that poetic expression is a great gift, a gift necessary to a poet. When beautiful thoughts are couched in beautifullanguage, there is an additional beauty which springs from the amalgamation of the two. The thought appears lovelier because of the musical language; the language appears lovelier because of the pleas ing thought. There is a reflection of bright beauty from one to the other, and this reflection doubles the brilliance

which

emanates from

both. And this is especially the case, so far as regards the thoughts and expressions in the popular poetry of an Asiatic people like the Tamilians. Ardent thoughts are expressed in glowing language : the thoughts breathe of a tropical sky; the words burn with all the fire of oriental imagery. With these prefatory remarks, I beg to draw the attention of the reader to the following