The Sleeping Bard; Or, Visions of the World, Death, and HellWynne, Ellis
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The Sleeping Bard; Or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell
Wynne, Ellis
Allegories; Christian life; Religious literature, Welsh; Welsh literature -- 18th century; Welsh literature -- Translations into English
"O ye living people, spawn of Satan that ye are! what is the reason
that ye cannot let me be at rest now that I am dead, and all is over
with me? What have I done to you? What have I done to cause you to
defame me in every thing, who have a hand in nothing, and to blame me
for that of which I am entirely ignorant?" "Who are you?" said I with
a timorous bow, "for I really do not understand you." "I am," said
he, "the unfortunate Juan de la Encina, whom, notwithstanding I have
been here many years, ye mix up with all the follies which ye do and
say during your lives; for all your lives long, whenever you hear of
an absurdity, or commit one, you are in the habit of saying, 'Juan de
la Encina could not have acted more like a fool;' or, 'that is one of
the follies of Juan de la Encina.' I would have you know that all you
men, when you say or do foolish things, are Juan de la Encina; for
this appellation of Encina, seems wide enough to cover all the
absurdities of the world."
Nevertheless, though there is a considerable amount of what is Quevedo's
in the Visions of Elis Wyn, there is a vast deal in them which strictly
belongs to the Welshman. Upon the whole, the Cambrian work is superior
to the Spanish. There is more unity of purpose in it, and it is far less
encumbered with useless matter. In reading Quevedo's Visions, it is
frequently difficult to guess what the writer is aiming at; not so whilst
perusing those of Elis Wyn. It is always clear enough, that the Welshman
is either lashing the follies or vices of the world, showing the
certainty of death, or endeavouring to keep people from Hell, by
conveying to them an idea of the torments to which the guilty are
subjected in a future state.
Whether Elis Wyn had ever read the Visions of Quevedo in their original
language, it is impossible to say; the probability however is, that he
was acquainted with them through the medium of an English translation,
which was published in London about the beginning of the eighteenth
century; of the merits of that translation the present writer can say
nothing, as it has never come to his hand: he cannot however help
observing, that a person who would translate the Visions of Quevedo, and
certain other writings of his, should be something more than a fair
Spanish scholar, and a good master of the language into which he would
render them, as they abound not only with idiomatic phrases, but terms of
cant or Germania, which are as unintelligible as Greek or Arabic to the
greater part of the Spaniards themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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