a typical
French grisette, into 'a very amiable and spirituelle milliner'! It must
be admitted that Joseph Surface himself could hardly show greater tact
and delicacy, though we ourselves must plead guilty to preferring Madame
Sand's own description of her as an 'enfant du vieux pave de Paris.'

As regards the English version, which is by M. Gustave Masson, it may be
up to the intellectual requirements of the Harrow schoolboys, but it will
hardly satisfy those who consider that accuracy, lucidity and ease are
essential to a good translation. Its carelessness is absolutely
astounding, and it is difficult to understand how a publisher like Mr.
Routledge could have allowed such a piece of work to issue from his
press. 'Il descend avec le sourire d'un Machiavel' appears as 'he
descends into the smile of a Machiavelli'; George Sand's remark to
Flaubert about literary style, 'tu la consideres comme un but, elle n'est
qu'un effet' is translated 'you consider it an end, it is merely an
effort'; and such a simple phrase as 'ainsi le veut Festhe'tique du
roman' is converted into 'so the aesthetes of the world would have it.'
'Il faudra relacher mes Economies' is 'I will have to draw upon my
savings,' not 'my economies will assuredly be relaxed'; 'cassures
resineuses' is not 'cleavages full of rosin,' and 'Mme. Sand ne reussit
que deux fois' is hardly 'Madame Sand was not twice successful.'
'Querelles d'ecole' does not mean 'school disputations'; 'ceux qui se
font une sorte d'esthetique de l'indifference absolue' is not 'those of
which the aesthetics seem to be an absolute indifference'; 'chimere'
should not be translated 'chimera,' nor 'lettres ineditees' 'inedited
letters'; 'ridicules' means absurdities, not 'ridicules,' and 'qui pourra
definir sa pensee?' is not 'who can clearly despise her thought?' M.
Masson comes to grief over even such a simple sentence as 'elle s'etonna
des fureurs qui accueillirent ce livre, ne comprenant pas que l'on haisse
un auteur a travers son oeuvre,' which he translates 'she was surprised
at the storm which greeted this book, _not understanding that the author
is hated through his work_.' Then, passing over such phrases as
'substituted by religion' instead of 'replaced by religion,' and
'vulgarisation' where 'popularisation' is meant, we come to that most
irritating form of translation, the literal word-for-word style. The
stream 'excites itself by the declivity which it obeys' is one of M.