Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/151

 Bruns 145 index, the former not. In the index some distinction should have been made between complete and partial translation, especially when a translator has taken only one stanza and that hardly characteristic for the rest of the hymn. The history of Paul Gerhardt in England and America naturally divides itself into two main periods, the first of which, about the middle of the eighteenth century, centers around Moravians. The translators were either Moravians or had come under Moravian influence (to the five names in the biographical appendix should be added that of L. E. Schlecht, mentioned on p. Ill as translator of Wir singen dir, Emanuel). Among the latter were the Wesleys; John Wesley gave free versions of three of Gerhardt 's hymns. Although many of the Moravian translations are fairly literal and for the sake of the melody have preserved the original meter, they are on the whole what Goethe called parodierend. Great liberties are taken with the text and crass examples of bad taste are rather frequent. It is not without interest to note the favorite hymns of these early translators, for their literary predilections are strongly evident here. Thus we find four versions of Welt, sieh hier dein LebenAm Stamm des Kreuzes schweben with its moralizing undertone and two of Ein Lammleingeht UndtragtdieSchidd the Lamnilein- poesie appealed to the Moravians. On the other hand they were content with only one and, at that, utterly hopeless version of Haupt wll Blut and Wunden, the most powerful of all German passion hymns. Three renderings are mentioned of the more didactic Befiehl du deineWege, but only one of the genuinely lyrical Nun ruhen die W alder. Stanza eight of the latter, however, made a strong appeal: Mr. Hewitt enumerates three different versions. It has something of the strain of the Lammleinpoesie: Brett aus die Fliigel beide, Jestt, meine Freude, Und nimm dein Kuchlcin ein. The second period in the history of Gerhardt in the English world is by far the more important. Two things have helped to make it so: the increased interest in the German language and literature that arose in the early decades of the nineteenth century and a changed attitude in the English church to hymn and hymn singing, marked by the publication of Keble's Christian Year and Bishop Heber's Hymns (1827). Of the twenty-nine translators included in the biographical appendix twenty-four belong to this second period. In the body of book fifteen others are mentioned, each credited with one or two hymns. The most complete transla- tion of Gerhardt's hymns is by Rev. John Kelly, published in 1867. His work, though not without merit, is marred by serious flaws: impossible rhymes, as throne crown, truth mouth; archaic forms in stanzas that ring modern, to achieve the necessary double rhymes; or even such monstrosities as sink us bethink us. Mr.