top of their expectations, and makes over to him, his mimic universe full of materials for the purpose.
Suns, moons, and stars, nor save, nor spare,
And walls of rock and seas of fire,
And living things of earth and air.—
Exhaust creation's wildest range,
Its tribute far and wide compel,
And lend your scents with skilful change,
From heav'n, throughout the earth, and hell.
I pause here to express my utter dissatisfaction, disappointment, and anger, at Lord Levison Gower. This dialogue, which in the original is eminently characteristic and full of sentiments, which though the situation makes them border on ridicule, are yet natural and true—vividly brought out and strikingly contrasted—all this, I say, he has tamed down in his translation, so that the greater part of it is not fit for the poet's corner in a village newspaper. One passage deserves to be excepted—it is the first of those I have translated, and I shall cite his version here, because one or two ideas in the lines in italics are preserved from the original in his, which are lost, or nearly so, in mine—in the rest my own, as a translation, is most accurate of the two.
When I was an expectant too—
When through the wilds of fancy stealing,
The stream of song was ever new—
When morning mists the scene surrounded,
And buds foretold the promised rose—
When bee-like o'er the flowers I bounded,
And plucked and rifled as I chose.
Enough yet little formed my treasure—
The hope of truth—illusion's present pleasurs.
Give me the active spring of gladness,
Of pleasure stretch'd almost to pain—
My hate, my love, in all their madness—
Give me my youth again.
A passage which follows this is tolerably done, but all the rest is bad, excessively; but I do not complain of this so much, because it is in virtue of a privilege I have claimed for the whole herd of translators—servum pecus—but he has changed a corner stone of the design. Instead of the stage buffoon or clown, he introduces a friend with the manager and poet, thus destroying some of the liveliest points of the conversation, and deadening the little spirit that had not been distilled out of it
