r Blackie had taken
upon him a very difficult task in attempting to translate the great work
of the great German, and we need not wonder that he did not succeed
entirely. We believe, with Mr Lewes, that the perfect accomplishment of
this task is impossible, and that Goethe's work is fully intelligible
only to the German scholar. But, at the same time, Mr Blackie fully
succeeded in the aim which he set before him. He says in the preface,
"The great principle on which the excellence of a poetical translation
depends, seems to be, that it should not be a mere _transposing_, but a
_re-casting_, of the original. On this principle, it has been my first
and chief endeavour to make my translation spirited--to seize, if
possible, the very soul and living power of the German, rather than to
give a careful and anxious transcription of every individual line, or
every minute expression." If this is what a translator should do, there
can be no question that the "Faust" of Blackie is all that can be
desired--full of spirit and life, harmonious from beginning to end, and
reading exactly like an original. The best proof of its success is that
Mr Lewes, in his biography of Goethe, prefers it, as a whole, to any of
the other poetical translations of Goethe. The preliminary remarks are
very characteristic, written with that intense enthusiasm which still
animates all his writings. The notes at the end are full of curious
information regarding the witchcraft and astrology of the Middle Ages,
gathered with assiduous labour from the stores of the Advocates'
Library.

The translation of "Faust" established Mr Blackie's reputation as a
German scholar; and, for some time after this, he was chiefly occupied
in reviewing German books for the _Foreign Quarterly Review_. He was
also a contributor to _Blackwood_, _Tait_, and the _Westminster Review_.
The subjects on which he principally wrote were poetry, history or
religion; and among his articles may be mentioned a genial one on
Uhland, a deeply earnest article on Jung Stillung, whose life he seems
to have studied very thoroughly, and several on the later campaigns of
Napoleon. To this last subject he then gave very great attention, as
almost every German and English book on the subject that appeared is
reviewed by him; and the article which describes Napoleon's Leipzig
campaign is one of the clearest military monographs that has been
written. During this time, Mr Blackie was still pursuing his Lat