The Jerusalem delivered of Torquato Tasso

Front matter

Class POMAX

THE

JERUSALEM DELIVERED 32 ^

Preface

This translation, if it may still be called the same after much of it has been re-written, was published in 1851, and soon came to a premature death. As far as the Author is aware there were only three reviews of it. The one in the John Bull was short, but wholly laudatory, and characterized the work as being, " apart from its high merit as a translation, a delectable English Poem." That which appeared in the Examiner was partly favorable, but mostly the reverse, as may be seen from the letter respecting it inserted after the Prefaces. The third, in the Spectator, was vituperative throughout, discovering no merit at all in any port of the work : each of the other two had at least awarded some degree of praise,

And this last notice, being certainly clever, probably gave a quietus to the new-born brat of the Author's brain.

For a long time afterwards he attempted no more to brave the critics, whose bristling pens reminded him of the words of Dante :

But subsequently, and especially during the severe illness which, twenty-three years later, has confined him to the house; for many months, he has amused himself with revising his work, and has discovered in

E

>t himself many more imperfections and mistakes, I some less excusable ones, than those which had been pointed out by others. He imagines that he has at last so far improved the version as to justify him in giving it one more chance of survival by reprinting it for his friends : and if the public should ever inquire h ; w he comes now to have learnt so proper and so modest a \;r. he may reply with Reynard in the

fable : " Why, to tell your Majesty the truth. I was taught it by the Ass that lie there" — meaning

the luckless first Edition.

Preface To The Fiest Editiox

There seems to be an opinion now very generally prevailing that a translation, to arrive at the greatest attainable degree of perfection, should assume as nearly as possible the form of its original. The old heroic couplet is no longer regarded as the sole garb in which a foreign poet can be decently presented to the English public. This garb was doubtless retained so long not solely from imitation or fashion, but also from a want of confidence in the powers of the English tongue. Our rhymes were known to be far less copious than those of the Italian, and this circumstance may have long deterred the translators who succeeded Dryden and Pope from seriously attempting the triple or quadruple rhyme. They may have despaired of moving through their tasks as gracefully as those masters of song, if they allowed themselves to be encumbered with such heavy shackles. They were so dazzled by the splendour of Pope's conquests, that they did not perceive how much he had sacrificed to gain them ; so they, too, resolved to neglect all else in order to attain to a similar smoothness of style.

But it is well understood now that this excessive smoothness may be acquired at the expense of more valuable qualities. A certain degree of it indeed is indispensable, and is not beyond our reach ; for the English language is exceedingly rich in synonyms, and is capable in an extraordinary degree of expansion, by the use of its Eoman derivatives, and of contraction by means of its Saxon monosyllables. Moreover the ancient forms of words, which may be properly employed in many kinds of serious poetry, add greatly to our stock of words and rhymes. He who translates, therefore, into our language, must feel that he has a most powerful weapon in his hand, though he himself may be unable to wield it with dexterity.

These considerations are sufficient to justify an attempt at rendering the grand epic of Tasso into English ottava rima, in spite of the labours of Hoole and his

Vlll PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

successors. All their versions have been made either in the heroic couplet, or in what seems to be still more incongruous, the Spenserian stanza : and hence the following work cannot properly be compared with any of these, nor come into competition with them.

But there is already extant a version in the metre of the original, which not only w^as popular soon after it was produced, but may be said to have risen to popularity again in the present day. And certainly the " Godfrey of Bulloigne " by Fairfax is a work which is never likely to vanish from English literature. There is a charm about the ancient structure of its language which can hardly fail to allure ; for the degree of its antiquity is such that it is sufficiently aged to excite feelings of veneration, and yet sufficiently modern to be intelligible to all. There is a spirit and an ease in the versification, too, which is wonderful considering the age in which it was produced ; there being no more inversion of language than was almost allowable in the prose of that day, or than was hidden from notice by the antique structure and grouping of the words.

But these very virtues which we commend are reasons why a new version may be attempted without presumption. There are many who prefer modern language to ancient, however beautiful or intelligible the latter may be ; and there are still more who would like to have the genuine thoughts of Tasso more faithfully portrayed. The words of the Italian poet are chosen throughout with the most fastidious nicety, and can very rarely be added to, curtailed, or altered in any way, without some loss of effect. Fairfax seems to have been utterly without a perception of this fact, for he capriciously inserts, lops off, and changes at almost every line without remorse, and without necessity. If one idea catches his fancy, he frequently dwells on it and dilates it into tautology and verbiage ; and then of course must squeeze the adjacent ideas into narrower compass, or exclude them altogether. The reader who wishes for an example, of what is meant need not dip far into his version. At the beginning of it, in the fourth stanza, occurs the following couplet : —

My muse hereafter shall perhaps unfold

Your fights, your battles, and your combats bold.

Preface To The First Edition. IX

\Yhat is tlie last line but downright inept garrulity ] And yet similar instances may be found constantly recurring ; insomuch that it is clear the writer delighted in such work, and seized every opportunity of thus playing the conjuror, and showing on what an insignificant base he could pile a pyramid of words. Xor does he only debase the language of his original ; he even lowers the characters also, particularly those which are Pagan. He writes as if he thought it the duty of a Christian ever to speak of all these with horror; and the character of Emirene, so noble in the original, and so worthy to be Godfrey's rival, he especially injures. Thus while both the sentences and the personages of Tasso are like so many pieces of exquisite sculpture, carved out of Parian marble, and polished to the highest degree of splendour ; those of Fairfax are copies in rough clay, exhibiting strong signs of genius indeed, but coarse in the extreme, and full of cracks and flaws.

The author of the present attempt is fully aware of the danger to which he exposes himself by speaking thus openly of a work which has been long and highly applauded. He is induced to do so by no overweening opinion of the merits of his own labours, and by no defiance of criticism, but simply by his love of Tasso and his love of truth. Whether he himself shall be able to supply the deficiencies of Fairfax, or not, he cannot but protest against the " Godfrey of Eulloigne " being taken as a fair specimen of the " Gerusalemme Liberata." The old English version is, he admits, a fine poem in many respects, but emphatically it is not Tasso. The field is therefore still open to other translators ; so that even in case of failure, it will not be disgraceful to have attempted the task.

For the author of the following version to plead the difficulty of it, and to dwell on the arduous character of the metre adopted, will be in vain : for though these circumstances may add some flowers to his wreath if he shall be successful, they will excite for him but little compassion in case he shall be deemed to have failed. All that he wishes to state is that he has not rushed irreverently before the public with a hasty performance ; and all that he cares to ask for is an accurate examination and a candid judgment.

THE EXAMINER EXAMINED

IX A LETTER TO A FRIEND.

~Mx dear Sir, — At your request I have put into writing the remarks which I made on the Examiner's late review of my version of Tasso.

The critic in that paper of Xovember 29th begins with the Argument to the first Canto, and gives what he calls a literal translation to be compared with mine. He is utterly unconscious that there are two sets of Arguments, of which he has taken the one, and I the other : no wonder, then, the results do not tally very precisely. Moreover, he evidently supposes these Arguments to be written by Tasso himself, whereas they are the work of inferior hands.

It is scarcely worth while to notice the critic's unqualified assertion that " ottava rhna is not a difficult metre ; " for however " manageable " it may b° in original composition, even " a child " may discover ihat such metre must exceedingly increase the difficulties of translation.

His attack upon the first stanza of Canto XII is not unjust, and I freely resign this morsel to his wrath, only regretting that I could not make it more palatable. It would be strange indeed if among nearly two thousand stanzas criticism could not fasten upon a single faulty one ; and if even

candour might pardon an occasional nod in a humble translator. At the same time I think my poetic version quite as good as his in prose \ for what can be more absurd than to make Tasso say that at night time " there lay the Pagans strengthening their defences," as if men could work while they were lying down ] The critic seems to disrelish old Italian as much as he does old

THE EXAMINER EXAMINED. XI

English, words, and to mistake gian (they went about) for giacean (they lay clown). Nor is this the only blunder in his luckless attempt at literal translation. Instead of " the laborious people did not take refreshment in sleep," it should be, since he insists on exactness, " the laborious peoples (meaning the Franks and the Pagans) did not take refreshment with sleep," or rather " from sleep " as the English idiom requires. It is only the somnambulist, or other dreamer, who talks of " taking refreshment in sleep." Judge now whether the learned critic is not as unsafely seated on his prosaic donkey as he represents me to be on my poetical Pegasus. Good translation, it seems, is not so very easy a matter after all, even to this judicious scholar, and in simple prose.

As to the rest of his charges : that my version is not absolutely literal ; that it contains a few ancient words, as do the works of almost all poets ; that there are several bad rhymes, for which authority could be produced from the double, not triple, rhymes of Dryden and Pope ; that there are " a tolerable number " of what he calls imperfect lines, i.e. lines not consisting of five regular monotonous iambs, which seem to him necessary for the constitution of harmony ; and lastly that I have taken a great deal of pains with the work : to all these charges, I say, I plead guilty, and regard most of them as merits ratlier than defects.

It is curious enough, however, that in his concluding remarks he unsays briefly the greater part of what he had said lengthily in the beginning. For instance. compare these parallel passages together, and see how the one flatly contradicts the other :

The following is a fair spe- There are not a few pages

cimen of the degree of firm- like the following, with which

ness with which Mr. Smith sits we close, and from which it

his steed, and which we find will be seen that if we had not

displayed wherever we watch mingled fair and honest praise

him as he travels down his ■ with our objections, we should

line of road. not have conveyed a fair impression.

Almost in every stanza he If all difficulties be conhas found it necessary to put sidered, we may call the verin one or more redundant sion very close, .... and there words or phrases to eke out are passages in which the trans- Ins lines. lation is not only close, but also

spirited.

What has been done through- We do not mean to say that

Xll THE EXAMINER EXAMINED.

out indeed under distress for in the six hundred and odd rhyme would startle Dr. La- pages of verse . . . the number tham, who lays down with of bad rhymes is at all great. horrible distinctness the laws of rhyming in his Prosody.

It would be easy to add to this list, but the sum of all is, that I have proved myself " to be beyond all question a clever man," — how? — by making a bad translation of Tasso !

Ought not the man who presumes to mould the public opinion to have formed at least a consistent one of his own 1 And are you not now disposed to ask with me, what could the Editor of the Examiner be doing when he admitted this tissue of blunders and self-contradictions into his respected columns ? Believe me,

My dear Sir,

Ever sincerely yours,

C. LESINGHAM SMITH.

TOEQUATO TASSO'S

JERUSALEM DELIVERED.

Canto I. Argument

That Sion may receive in her sad plight

Fit aid at last, and 'scape from grievous thrall,

An angel from the skies bends down his flight, And ronses Godfrey to the battle's call :

Whence he assembles every gallant knight Into one host, aud shines there chief o'er all :

The camp is therefore seen with steel to shine,

And hastes with him to' achieve the grand design.