forth a casket that should be one of the richest
of its kind! The worst is, they are most of them not necessaries but
luxuries. It is impossible to conceive of life without Shakespeare and
Burns, without _Paradise Lost_ and the _Intimations_ ode and the immortal
pageant of the _Canterbury Tales_; but (the technical question apart) to
imagine it wanting Hugo's lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which
he was so prodigal has but an arbitrary and conventional value. Like the
magician's money much has changed, almost in the act of distribution,
into withered leaves; and such of it as seems minted of good metal is not
for general circulation.

HEINE

The Villainy Translation.

Heine had a light hand with the branding-iron, and marked his subjects
not more neatly than indelibly. And really he alone were capable of
dealing adequate vengeance upon his translators. His verse has only
violent lovers or violent foes; indifference is impossible. Once read as
it deserves, it becomes one of the loveliest of our spiritual
acquisitions. We hate to see it tampered with; we are on thorns as the
translator approaches, and we resent his operations as an individual
hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our
borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he
carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays
a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them
anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them
with a villainous compound of his contrivance, and then bids us admire
the effect and thank him for its production! Is any name too hard for
such a creature? and could any vengeance be too deadly? If he walked
into your garden and amused himself so with your cabbages, you could put
him in prison. But into your poets he can stump his way at will, and
upon them he can do his pleasure. And he does it. How many men have
brutalised the elegance, the grace, the winning urbanity of Horace! By
how many coarse and stupid fingers has Catullus been smudged and fumbled
and mauled! To turn _Faust_ into English (in the original metres) is a
fashionable occupation; there are more perversions of the _Commedia_ than
one cares to recall; there is scarce a great or even a good work of the
human mind but has been thus bedevilled and deformed. _Don Quixote_, _le
Pere Goriot_, _The Frogs_, _The Decameron_--the trail