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98
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL 5, 1872
s natural product of his fatherland. A certain poetic diction. It appears to be the aim of course of education is necessary before an most modern English poets to say a thing Englishman een appreciate the 'ox-eye' of Ath- "not only as it never has been said before, ena, before he can see any force in Æneas but as no one else would have been likely to being styled 'father,' and before he can be think of saying it." Even & real thinker, like lieve in the existence of an Il Purgatorio. Browning, often clothes his thoughts in language And I hope the reader will reflect that if which is anything but plain English. Thus the themes of the poems of Homer, Virgil the vicious taste is daily gaining ground in and Dante do not possess many fascinations for England of regarding the dress more than the Englishmen, how much less likely are the sub- person, poetic phraseology more than poetic jects of the poems of a rude non-European thought. nation to do so. In the second place, the But let one of our English poets be translatlanguage of Chapman, Connington, and Cary, ed into a foreign language, or better still, into though undoubtedly very fine, cannot be well English prose, and the real value of his writings supposed to be as good English as Homer's will be at once apparent. In the crucible of language was good Greek, Virgil's good Latin, translation all petty adornments of rhyme and and Dante's good Italian. And in my own rhythm are separated, like dross, from the pure case, I have keenly and constantly felt, whilst precious metal of the thought. The thought engaged in translating from Tamil popular remains, and the reader is obliged to judge by poems, how utterly impossible it was for me it, and by it alone, of the value of the poet's to reproduce the infinite harmonious iteration work, and his real position as one of the sweet of sound and sense of the original. I therefore singers of the world. "Dryden said of Shakeshave to ask the reader to judge merely of the peare, that if his embroideries were burnt down, poetical thoughts in Tamil popular poetry from there would be silver at the bottom of the melting my translation ; for, if he wishes to ascertain pot." Goethe says :-"I honour both rhythm the beauty of the language, he must go to the and rhyme, by which poetry first becomes original and to that alone.
poetry; but the properly deep and radical But it has sometimes been considered that operative-the truly developing and quickening there is one certain advantage, amongst many dis- -is that which remains of the poet when he is advantages, resulting from the judgment of a poet's translated into prose. The inward substance writings being based upon their accurate transla- then remains in its purity and fulness; which, tion, and not upon his writings in the original. when it is absent, a dazzling exterior often Without adopting any of the various defini- deludes with semblance of, and when it is present, tions of poetry, let us consider for a moment conceals." what pleases us in any writing and forces our But, on the other hand, it cannot for a mointellectual discriminative faculties to pronounce ment be denied that poetic expression is a great it poetry. The prime source of pleasure always gift, a gift necessary to a poet. When beautiful ought to be the thoughts contained in the writ- thoughts are couched in beautiful language, there ing" thoughts that shake mankind,"-origi- is an additional beauty which springs from the nal, deep, suggestive, and sublime thoughts- amalgamation of the two. The thought appears thoughts fanciful, playful, or grotesque, lovelier because of the musical language; the thoughts that cheer or thoughts that elevate, language appears lovelier becanse of the pleasthoughts that in any way exercise a vis medicinos ing thought. There is a reflection of bright on the mind of the reader. Such ought to be beauty from one to the other, and this reflection the prime source of pleasure : but in a great doubles the brilliance which emanates from measure it is not. Englishmen now-a-days both. And this is especially the case, so far as seem to prefer sound to sense. If a man can regards the thoughts and expressions in the dress a trite thought in a novel manner he is a popular poetry of an Asiatic people like the poet. The mysterious utterances of the Del- Tamilians. Ardent thoughts are expressed in phic Oracle of the past were nothing to the glowing language : the thoughts breathe of a ambiguous phraseology patronized by the Ros- tropical sky; the words burn with all the fire settis and Swinburnes of the present. Extra- of oriental imagery. ordinary involutions of style, bristling with me- | With these prefatory remarks, I beg to draw taphor and glittering with rhyme, constitute the attention of the reader to the following
