too

"seuls;" but that the translation might become. "weak" indeed, the simple words "trop faibles" are multiplied into the idiomatic English of "not strong "enough to maintain their position." The matter was accordingly arranged, says M. Guizot, "sans plus de "bruit." Hushed-up would be no bad idiom for that; but unfortunately hushed-up would mean what M. Guizot means, and so, says the translator, it was arranged "with"out further difficulty." Significantly M. Guizot adds, of the modified pledge offered by the dissidents, that with it "on se contenta;" which insignificantly the translator renders "it was accepted."

These are small items of criticism, it will be said. But let it be understood that the last seven of them all arise out of a single paragraph, and that the last six are all on the same page; and let any one conceive what murder is done upon the soul of a book, 700 pages long, when a translator sits down in this manner to the work of killing it by inches.

We turn over, and on the first line of the next page read that the compromise described was "to a very great "extent" the work of Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane : "to a very great extent" being the translator's idiom for "surtout." Before we get to the middle of the page we find a date set down as November, without any note of its having been written December in the text. On the first line of the next page, Vane's suggestion of an oath of fidelity simply referring to the future is spoken of as an idea whereof Cromwell was one of the most eager

"to

Of the

express his entire approval:" the translator in that supplying his peculiar idiom for "à s'en contenter." Similarly we find, in the sentence following, that for "nul the English idiom is "no one for a moment.” committee of three who held the powers of the Admiralty, M. Guizot says that Vane "était l'âme;" and his translator says (diluting it into his idiom), that Vane "was the "chief." Blake then enters on the scene, by whom, according to M. Guizot, the glory of the Commonwealth

at sea was hereafter "à faire ;" and this expression is rendered" to augment," that its spirit may be utterly destroyed.

We promised to comment on the first dozen pages of the authorised English version of M. Guizot's Commonwealth and Cromwell, and if we redeem our promise we must discuss four more. Rather than do that, we will break it. But we quote from both texts the beginning of page nine; the English water side by side with the French wine; and we think no reader who examines it will desire that we should splash on through the rest of this page, or the pages following. The passage, feeble as it is, is far above the average; for in it the sense of the text does absolutely survive what the translator overlays it with, though in what condition the reader will see.

"La chambre avait touché et pourvu à tout; la legislation, la diplomatie, la justice, la police, les finances, l'armée, la flotte étaient dans ses mains. Pour paraître aussi desintéressée qu'elle était active, elle admit les membres qui s'étaient séparés du parti vainqueur, au moment de sa rupture definitive avec le roi, a reprendre leur place dans ses rangs, mais en leur imposant un tel désaveu de leurs anciens votes que bien peu d'entre eux purent s'y résoudre."

"The house had revised and arranged every department of the administration; the legislation and diplomacy of the country, the courts of justice, the police, the finances, the army, and the fleet, were all in its hands. To appear as disinterested as it was active, it permitted those members who had separated from the conquering party, at the moment of its definitive rupture with the king, to resume their seats in its midst; but it required from them at the same time such a disavowal of their former votes, that very few could persuade themselves to take advantage of this concession."

Such is the translation which M. Guizot has authorised, and which the law now protects against any better that might replace it. The example should not be thrown away. It is an evil, but ought not to be a necessary evil, of the protection given under international copyright, that if a book be marred in the translation, it is marred

past hope of mending. The new law is not less politic than it is just, for without it there can be no inducement sufficient to invite to such labour the employment of original talents and real learning. But if, through want of care in obtaining these, inapt or inferior talents are now employed and protected, mischief beyond retrieval is done. Nor is it easy to make the proper choice. A man may be a very respectable writer who will turn out to be an execrable translator, though it would be next to impossible that a good translator should not also be a writer of respectable powers. But foreign writers cannot be too careful in steadily looking this difficulty in the face, before resolving to let their works pass out of their keeping. What an engraver is in the eyes of an artist, a translator should be in the eyes of an author; and while, in the former case, our academicians have been lately yielding, to the most eminent in the craft, a right of brotherhood, in the latter the best masters have at all times been esteemed, by authors of repute, as brother craftsmen. If publishers are indisposed to the same view, the public should protect themselves. Copyright in translation will involve grave injury to them, if it lowers instead of raising the average of translating ability by lowering the prices paid for it. To give no more under the new law to the author and the translator, than under the old was given to the translator alone, is to mistake altogether the object of a change which was meant to increase the facilities for properly remunerating both, by protecting translations of a really high character from unequal rivalry with the indifferent or utterly worthless. We invite to the subject, therefore, a more minute attention than it has hitherto been customary to give to it. A more exacting criticism of translation as translation may at least check the incapable with some fear of censure, and cheer on the work of the really able with some small hope of a just fame.

The lights and shades of style indicate the bias of an author's mind. In describing their effacement from the

English version of this history, we have found also means to indicate what, in M. Guizot's case, the bias is. What it is, it could hardly fail to be. It requires but the opening sentence of the volumes' to reveal to us that the feelings of the writer are here more nearly touched than they had been by the former portion of his narrative. His account of the revolution down to the King's execution was given in a style as calm as it was clear: but here, where only the men of the Republic are before him, though he is still philosophical, still to the utmost of his ability a righteous judge, a ripple before unseen appears upon the surface of his judgment; and we cannot but think of all the interval which has passed since that first portion of his book was written. The statesman who has connected his own name in history with endeavours to preserve a king and a constitution, and who saw king and constitution swept away to make room for an ephemeral republic, holds fast, nevertheless, by a constitutional monarchy as not merely the best form of government, but, so to speak, as his own cause, and regards a republic with some sense of personal antagonism. The open expression of this, indeed, is as far as possible subdued ; but not less is it discernible.

Sixty-one years ago a high-spirited young lawyer died at Nîmes on the scaffold, sentenced to death for his dislike of a republic by a court obedient to the French Republican Convention. That young man, twenty-seven

years old when his life was taken, was the father of M. Guizot. The latter was only a boy of seven at the time, but he was old enough to receive into his soul undying recollection of the murder in the name of liberty that made a widow of his mother. The decree which took away the father's life and confiscated his possessions, ordered also that his children,-the boy just named, and another little son,-should be committed to the foundling hospital, and brought up in accordance with a revolutionary law. But their mother, a noble woman, whom her eldest-born, then become a statesman and historian of European fame, saw grieving after fifty years of widowhood with fresh tears for the husband of her youth, took them with the wreck of her fortune out of France, and dwelt with them for six years at Geneva, watching carefully their education. Father and mother had been pious Protestants, firm against the pressure of religious persecution; and, open to all grave and noble influences, M. Guizot's boyhood at Geneva was full of the promise which his manhood has long since more than fulfilled. By the reflective tone of his mind, by his skill in reasoning, by a surprising aptitude for the acquisition of languages, and by a taste for historical inquiry, even so early he distinguished himself. Sent at the age of eighteen as a law student to Paris, his abilities were quickly recognised by men ready to turn them to account. His pen was soon brought into use; and his literary talents as well as industry were displayed in the publication by him, at the age of twenty-two, of his well-known Dictionary of Synonyms. He had begun at the same time the arduous enterprise of a translation of Gibbon, with original notes; and so prompt was the recognition of his manifest ability, that at the age of twenty-four he was made professor of modern history at the Faculty of Letters.

Through all the troubles of France during the years that ensued, M. Guizot, known as a man of the future, steadily maintained his position as a calm antagonist of whatever he believed to be anarchy. Standing between republican