adopts. It is, to be sure, more
decent and decorous, but it treats "Don Quixote" in the same fashion as a
comic book that cannot be made too comic.

To attempt to improve the humour of "Don Quixote" by an infusion of
cockney flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux's operators did, is not
merely an impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but an
absolute falsification of the spirit of the book, and it is a proof of
the uncritical way in which "Don Quixote" is generally read that this
worse than worthless translation--worthless as failing to represent,
worse than worthless as misrepresenting--should have been favoured as it
has been.

It had the effect, however, of bringing out a translation undertaken and
executed in a very different spirit, that of Charles Jervas, the portrait
painter, and friend of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. Jervas has been
allowed little credit for his work, indeed it may be said none, for it is
known to the world in general as Jarvis's. It was not published until
after his death, and the printers gave the name according to the current
pronunciation of the day. It has been the most freely used and the most
freely abused of all the translations. It has seen far more editions than
any other, it is admitted on all hands to be by far the most faithful,
and yet nobody seems to have a good word to say for it or for its author.
Jervas no doubt prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where
among many true words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he rashly and
unjustly charges Shelton with having translated not from the Spanish, but
from the Italian version of Franciosini, which did not appear until ten
years after Shelton's first volume. A suspicion of incompetence, too,
seems to have attached to him because he was by profession a painter and
a mediocre one (though he has given us the best portrait we have of
Swift), and this may have been strengthened by Pope's remark that he
"translated 'Don Quixote' without understanding Spanish." He has been
also charged with borrowing from Shelton, whom he disparaged. It is true
that in a few difficult or obscure passages he has followed Shelton, and
gone astray with him; but for one case of this sort, there are fifty
where he is right and Shelton wrong. As for Pope's dictum, anyone who
examines Jervas's version carefully, side by side with the original, will
see that he was a sound Spanish scholar, incomparably a better one than
Shelton, ex