e portion of disappointment the dramas, which it
has been my employment to translate. They should, however, reflect that
these are historical dramas taken from a popular German history; that we
must, therefore, judge of them in some measure with the feelings of
Germans; or, by analogy, with the interest excited in us by similar
dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or ignorant
enough to compare Schiller with Shakspeare; yet, merely as illustration,
I would say that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not
from Lear or Othello, but from Richard II., or the three parts of Henry
VI. We scarcely expect rapidity in an historical drama; and many prolix
speeches are pardoned from characters whose names and actions have formed
the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other hand, there exist
in these plays more individual beauties, more passages whose excellence
will bear reflection than in the former productions of Schiller. The
description of the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the Young
Lover, which follow it, form in the original a fine poem; and my
translation must have been wretched indeed if it can have wholly
overclouded the beauties of the scene in the first act of the first play
between Questenberg, Max, and Octavio Piccolomini. If we except the
scene of the setting sun in the Robbers, I know of no part in Schiller's
plays which equals the first scene of the fifth act of the concluding
plays. [In this edition, scene iii., act v.] It would be unbecoming in
me to be more diffuse on this subject. A translator stands connected
with the original author by a certain law of subordination which makes it
more decorous to point out excellences than defects; indeed, he is not
likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his
own labor will mingle with the feelings that arise from an afterview of
the original. Even in the first perusal of a work in any foreign
language which we understand, we are apt to attribute to it more
excellence than it really possesses from our own pleasurable sense of
difficulty overcome without effort. Translation of poetry into poetry is
difficult, because the translator must give a brilliancy to his language
without that warmth of original conception from which such brilliancy
would follow of its own accord. But the translator of a living author is
incumbered with additional inconveniences. If he render his original
faithfully as to the