Germans generally, who, from the close intercourse I have always maintained with that people, are inclined to look on my doings in the field of their literature with a specially favourable eye. Under these circumstances, it was only natural for me to imagine that the condemnation I had passed on my first juvenile attempt in verse had perhaps been too severe; and that, after all, I owed it to myself, and to Goethe, and to the noble people with whom I had been from my youth so intimately connected, to give my translation a thorough revisal, and to republish it in a form which might be as worthy of the ambition that such an attempt implied as my literary capability admitted. I accordingly, some four or five years ago, employed the leisure of the summer months in correcting, and in not a few places carefully rewriting, the whole work in the shape in which it now appears. The principal fault which led me to condemn so severely my early work was a certain deficiency in the easy natural grace, which every one who knows the great German poet must recognise as one of the most attractive characteristics of his composition. This deficiency arose in my case partly from want of experience in the dexterous use of poetical expression, partly from the habit of clinging too closely to the words of the original, which is the natural vice of a young and conscientious translator. Long practice in such matters has now convinced me that a literal version of a great poem never can be a graceful version; and poetry without grace is like painting without colour, or preaching without faith; it lacks the very feature which makes it what it pretends to be, and gives it a right to exist. Those who wish to be minutely curious about the _ipsissima verba_ of a great poem should read a prose translation; the mere want of the rhythmical movement never can deprive the work of its ideal character and elevating influence; and in the case of Faust this has been amply proved by the excellent translation of Mr. Hayward, which, I believe, has now reached a twelfth edition. But the problem of the poetical translator is to give, not the words, but the character of the original; to transfer its spirit, its tone, its salient features, and its rhythmical attitude, into another tongue, so far as the capabilities of that other tongue render such a transference possible. This is the principle on which I have worked. It would have been easy for me to have made many passages more literal; but, in doing so, I should have sacrificed the freedom of handling, without which I am convinced that graceful ease and naturalness in rhythmical composition is impossible.