Of the poetical merit of these translations, considered as English poems, their writer has no very exalted idea; of their _faithfulness as versions_, on the contrary, he has so deep a conviction, that he regrets exceedingly the fact, that the universal ignorance prevailing in England of the Russian language, will prevent the possibility of that important merit--strict fidelity--being tested by the British reader. Let the indulgent, therefore, remember, if we have in any case left an air of stiffness and constraint but too perceptible in our work, that this fault is to be considered as a sacrifice of grace at the altar of truth. It would have been not only possible, but easy, to have spun a collection of easy rhymes, bearing a general resemblance to the vigorous and passionate poetry of Pushkin; but this would not have been a _translation_, and a translation it was our object to produce. Bowring's _Russian Anthology_ (not to speak of his other volumes of translated poetry) is a melancholy example of the danger of this attractive but fatal system; while the names of Cary, of Hay, and of Merivale, will remain as a bright encouragement to those who have sufficient strength of mind to prefer the "strait and narrow way" of masterly _translation_, to the "flowery paths of dalliance" so often trodden by the _paraphraser_. In all cases, the metre of the original, the musical movement and modulation, has, as far as the translator's ear enabled him to judge, been followed with minute exactness, and at no inconsiderable expense, in some cases, of time and labour. It would be superfluous, therefore, to state, that the number of lines in the English version is always the same as in the original. It has been our study, wherever the differences in the structure of the two languages would permit, to include the same thoughts in the same number of lines. There is also a peculiarity of the Russian language which frequently rendered our task still more arduous; and the conquest of this difficulty has, we trust, conferred upon us the right to speak of our triumph without incurring the charge of vanity. We allude to the great abundance in the Russian of double terminations, and the consequent recurrence of double rhymes, a peculiarity common also to the Italian and Spanish versification, and one which certainly communicates to the versification of those countries a character so marked and peculiar, that no translator would be justified in neglecting it. As it would be impossible, without the use of Russian types, to give our readers an example of this from the writings of Pushkin, and as they would be unable to pronounce such a quotation even if they saw it, we will give an illustration of what we mean from the Spanish and the Italian. The first is from the fourth book of the _Galatea_ of Cervantes--