Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
_Crumbs from the Land o' Cakes_, by JOHN KNOX (published by Gould and
Lincoln), is a rapid sketch of a tour in Scotland, by an enthusiastic
admirer and native of that country. It makes no pretensions to
originality or literary skill, but written without affectation, and from
recent actual experience, it makes a very readable volume. The title is
quaintly explained in the preface. "Crumbs are but trifles, though a
morsel of manchineel may poison a man, and the same quantity of
gingerbread may tickle his palate; but the crumbs here presented do not
belong to either class. All Scotchmen know that the cakes for which
their native land is celebrated are made of oatmeal (baked hard); which,
though substantial, are very dry: this consideration will show the
propriety of the title. It is also appropriate in another respect, for
the writer is conscious that these fragmentary notes of travel in his
native country are, in comparison to the richness of the materials and
the subject, but as the crumbs to the loaf."
Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston, have published a third volume of DE
QUINCY's _Writings_, comprising his _Miscellaneous Essays_ on sacred
subjects, of which the quaint peculiarity of the title is suggestive of
the bold, fanciful genius of the author. Among them, we find "Murder,
considered as one of the Fine Arts;" "The Vision of Sudden Death;"
"Dinner, Real and Reputed," and others, all redolent of the strange
imaginative conceits, the playful toying with language, and the
startling intensity of description which characterize the Visions of the
English Opium Eater.
The same house have issued a neat duodecimo edition of GOETHE's _Faust_,
translated by HAYWARD, of which the curious aesthetic and philological
merits are well known to every German scholar. It is an almost literal
transcript of the original into English prose, but executed with such a
profound appreciation of its spirit, such nice verbal accuracy, and such
exquisite handling of the delicate mechanism of language, as to present
a more faithful idea of the wild and marvelous beauty of the great
German poem, than the most successful translation in verse. According to
Mr. Hayward's theory of translation, "If the English reader, not knowing
German, be made to stand in the same relation to Faust as the English
reader, thoroughly acquainted with German stands in toward it--that is,
if the same impressions be conveyed through the same sort of medium,
whether bright or dusky, coarse or fine--the very extreme point of a
translator's duty has been attained." The loudly-expressed verdict of
competent literary judges (so far as we know without a dissenting
voice), and the numerous editions it has gone through on both sides of
the Atlantic, are ample proofs of the felicitous and effective manner in
which the translator has completed the task thus imposed upon himself.
The Preface and Notes attached to this volume, show the vivacity of his
genius, and his rich stores of choice learning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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