Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/121

Rh and his untutored talent for expression, offer stumbling-blocks at every turn to the translator who wishes to preserve something of the tone of the original while presenting a continuous discourse to modern readers. The almost impossible task has to be attempted of reproducing the effect of heedless animated talking.

My own system has been to adopt a compromise between such literal rendering as might have made the English version not only unpalatable, but almost unintelligible, and such elaborate recasting of the original as would have preserved the sense at a regrettable sacrifice of character and vivacity. I may here notice that Cellini appears, at the commencement of his undertaking, to have been more tentative, more involved in diction, than he afterwards became; in fact, he only gradually formed his style. Therefore I have suffered the earlier sections of my version to retain a certain stiffness, which relaxes by degrees until the style of the translator is in its turn fashioned.