To Miss Brooke is due the well-merited praise of having been the first to introduce the English reader to a knowledge of these compositions. But that province of translation into which she led the way is open to all, and no one has a right to claim it as his exclusive property. Chapman translated Homer: he was followed by Hobbes, Hobbes by Pope, Pope by Cowper, Cowper by Sotheby. Who will be the next competitor in this fair field of fame? How many translators have we of Virgil, of Horace, of Anacreon, and of all the most eminent Greek and Latin poets, each advancing a claim to some kind of superiority over his rivals? Would that we had more such honourable rivalship in translations from the Irish! Miss Brooke has been faithful to the sense of her originals; but it appears to the present writer that she not unfrequently errs by being too diffuse, that several passages are weakened by unnecessary expansion, and that the spirit of the whole can be better preserved in a more varied form of versification than in the monotonous quatrains which she adopted. The prevalent fault of most poetical translations is diffuseness or amplification, by which the thoughts are weakened and their spirit lost. Much allowance, however, must be granted to those who attempt to clothe in English verse such compositions as the Irish Fenian tales; and any one who makes the experiment will feel the difficulty of preserving a just medium between a loose paraphrase and a strict verbal translation. It is almost if not altogether impossible to translate into rhyme without an occasional accessory idea or epithet on the one hand, and the omission of some unimportant adjunct on the other. The great object should be to preserve the spirit of the original--to be “true to the sense, but truer to his fame”--_nec verbum verbo reddere fidus_. Some passages could not be understood, others would not be endured by any reader of taste or refinement if rendered word for word. In my next communication I shall send you a translation of the first part of the Poem of the Chase--namely, the introductory dialogue between Patrick and Oisin. This shall be followed by the succeeding part of the poem, should you deem such compositions suited to the pages of your “Journal,” which I hope will be eminently useful in promoting both the literary and moral taste of the people of Ireland. D. [1] Cormac Ulfada, grandson of “Con of the hundred battles.” He reigned forty years, and was honoured as a wise statesman and a philosopher.