PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

In presenting to the public this imperfect translation of a very celebrated production of the first German writer, I hope for indulgence from those who are acquainted with the original. There are difficulties attending the translation of German works into English which might baffle one much more skilful in the use of the latter than myself. A great variety of compound words enable the German writer to give a degree of precision and delicacy of shading to his expressions nearly impracticable with the terse, the dignified, but by no means flexible English idiom. The rapid growth of German literature, the concurrence of so many master spirits, all at once fashioning the language into a medium for the communication of their thoughts, has brought it to a perfection which must gradually be impaired, as inferior minds mould and adapt it to their less noble uses. It may become better suited to certain kinds of light writing, but must lose its condensed power of expression, as the English has done.

I may be allowed to quote Mr. Coleridge in apology for a somewhat paraphrastical translation, not as presuming to compare mine with his Wallenstein, but to show that this accomplished writer deemed the rendering of the spirit, on the whole, more desirable than that of the letter. I would also shelter

myself in the shadow of the same illustrious name with regard to the broken and lengthened lines too frequent in my translation. It is more difficult to polish a translation than an original work, since we are denied the liberty of retrenching or adding where the ear and taste cannot be satisfied. But there is no sufficient apology for imperfection. I can only hope by a candid acknowledgment of its existence to propitiate the critic, believing that no setting can utterly mar the lustre of such a gem, or make this perfect work of art unwelcome to the meditative few, or even to the tasteful many.

The beautiful finish of style is lost, and in lieu of the manytoned lyre on which the poet originally melodized his inspired conceptions, a hollow-sounding reed is substituted. But the harmony with which the plot is developed, the nicely-adjusted contrasts between the characters, the beauty of composition, worthy the genius of ancient statuary, must still be perceptible.

It is, I believe, a novelty to see the mind of a poet analyzed and portrayed by another, who, however, shared the inspiration only of his subject, saved from his weakness by that superb balance of character in which Goethe surpasses even Milton. This alone would give the piece before us a peculiar interest.

The central situation of Tasso, the manner in which his companions draw him out, and are in turn drawn out by him, the mingled generosity and worldliness of the Realist Antonio, the mixture of taste, feeling, and unconscious selfishness in Alphonso, the more delicate but not less decided painting of the two Leonoras, the gradual but irresistible force by which the catastrophe is drawn down upon us, concur to make this drama a model of Art, that art which Goethe worshipped ever after he had exhaled his mental boyhood in Werther. The following

remarks from an essay of A. W. Schlegel are probably new to the reader: "Goethe has painted Tasso from a close study of his works. He has even made use of extracts from his poems. Thus the greater part of what Tasso says about the golden age is taken from the beautiful chorus in the first act of Aminta. Many such things are lost upon those who are not familiar with the poems of Tasso, though they may not be insensible to the exquisite delicacy and care with which the portrait is finished throughout. In the historical circumstances, Goethe has preferred the authority of the Abbe Serassi to the more generally consulted Manso. Serassi denies that the princess ever encouraged Tasso to pass the bounds of deference. Generally it is dangerous to finish a real life by an invented catastrophe, as Schiller has done with regard to the Maid of Orleans; but such clouds of doubt rest on portions of Tasso's life, and what is known of it is so romantic, that more liberty may be taken."