ever, without any joke at all,
I profess the very highest respect.]

Meantime, "mine dear Sare," could you not translate me back again into
German; and darn me as I have darned you? But you must not "sweat" me
down in the same ratio that I have "sweated" you: for, if you do that,
I fear that my "dimensions will become invisible to any thick sight" in
Germany; and I shall "present no mark" to the critical enemy. Darn me
into two portly volumes: and then I give you my word of honor that I
will again translate you into English, and darn you in such grand style
that, if Dolly and Professor Kant were both to rise from the dead,
Dolly should grow jealous of me--and Kant confess himself more puzzled
on the matter of personal identity by the final Walladmor than ever he
had been by the Cutlerian stockings.

Jusqu'au revoir! my dear principal: hoping that you will soon invest me
with that character in relation to yourself; and sign, as it is now
_my_ turn to sign,

Your obedient

(but not quite faithful),

TRANSLATOR.

FOOTNOTE TO "DEDICATION":

[Footnote 1: Mr. Schelling: for whom however, without any joke at all,
I profess the very highest respect.]

GERMAN "TRANSLATOR'S"

DEDICATION
TO
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

Sir,--Uncommon it may certainly be, but surely not a thing quite
unheard of, that a translator should dedicate his translation to the
author of the original work: and, the translation here offered to your
notice--being, as the writer flatters himself, by no means a _common
one_,--he is the more encouraged to take this very uncommon liberty.

Ah Sir Walter!--did you but know to what straits the poor German
translator of Walter-Scottish novels is reduced, you would pardon
greater liberties than this. _Ecoutez._ First of all, comes the
bookseller and cheapens a translator in the very cheapest market of
translation-jobbers that can be supposed likely to do any justice to
the work. Next,--the sheets, dripping wet as they arrive by every post
from the Edinburgh press, must be translated just as they stand with or
without sense or connexion. Nay it happens not unfrequently that, if a
sheet should chance to end with one or two syllables of an unfinished
word, we are obliged to translate this first