wrote of Elizabeth Smithes translation: "After a close scrutiny and a careful comparison with the original, it strikes me as conveying more of the true character and meaning of the Hebrew, with fewer departures from the idiom of the English than any other translation whatever that we possess. It combines accuracy of style, and unites critical research with familiar exposition."
This work was finished in 1803. She occupied herself also, while at Coniston, with making translations from the German of Klopstock,[1] chiefly letters and papers of the illustrious German devotional poet, and his congenial-minded wife; and it was said of her success in clothing the German author in an English dress:—"Klopstock, under her management, talks English as well as his native tongue; and the warmest of his admirers would rejoice to hear the facility and precision with which she has taught their favourite poet and philosopher to converse amongst us"
Her acquaintance with eminent poetical writings, and more especially with so sublime a work as the Book of Job, gave her a distaste for her own original poetic compositions. She felt their inferiority to the models which had formed her taste, and therefore, to the regret of many friends, ceased to exercise her pen in that way. As there is no subject, on which even sensible people so often deceive themselves, as on that of their own powers of poetic writings,
- ↑ Author of " The Messiah," etc.
