I know nothing more divine than the power of giving, and the will to give opportunely."

"The desire of being singular, and of astonishing mankind by uncommon deeds, is, in my opinion, the source of many virtues."

"It is not always grief that makes us weep: many sorts of sensation enter into the composition of tears."

"All philosophic systems are good only when one has no use for them."

We will now give one in the lady's own language, as a theme for some of our fair readers to render into English: which, we can assure them, will not be an easy task. Indeed, we are not acquainted with a French writer whom it would be more difficult to translate. Let any one, who doubts this, make the experiment.

Il y a des femmes qu'il faudroit assommer à frais communs ; øntendezvous bien ce que je vous dis là? oui, il faudroit les assommer. La perfidie, la trahison, P'insolence, l'effronterie, sont les qualités dont elles font Pusage le plus ordinaire; & l'infame mal-bonnêteté est le moindre de leurs défauts. Au reste, pas le moindre sentiment, je ne dis pas d'amour, car on ne sait ce que c'est, mais je dis, de la plus simple amitié, de charité naturelle, d'humanité; enfin ce sont des monstres, mais des monstres qui parlent, qui ont de l'esprit, qui ont un front d'airain, qui sont au dessus de tous reproches, qui prennent plaisir de triompher & d'abuser de la foiblesse humaine, & qui voudroient étendre leur tyrannie sur tous les états.

On the whole, we recommend this volume to the superintendants of boarding-schools, as a very proper book to be put into the hands of young ladies who study the French language; and we have often wondered that no such selection had been hitherto made.

FOREIGN WORKS of which ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

have appeared.

Cadell

ART. XXXI. Oberon, a Poem, from the German of Wieland. By
William Sotheby, Esq. 8vo. 2 Vols. 128. Boards.
jun. and Davies, &c. 1798.

IT

T is no doubt an advantage to any poem, to be perused in a foreign and difficult language. Why else do many classics please, which, when faithfully translated, please so little? To detain the attention on any passage by clothing it in a strange dialect, or in old spelling, certainly increases its stimulant power, gives it time to worm itself as it were into the mind, and enables many simple thoughts to act on the reader's sensibility, which in current language would seem insipid. We do not therefore ascribe it to any feebleness in the translator, if the poem of Oberon has affected us less in its English than in its German

Qq4

garb,

Ged...s.

garb. It is rendered sentence for sentence, and stanza for stanza, faithfully enough, but somewhat diffusely: eight lines being every where expanded into nine; although the natural conciseness of our language rather invited compression. The comic parts are less fortunate than the serious: but all are versified with smoothness and harmony, in a style well adapted to metrical romance, and not widely differing from that of Spenser. We shall present our readers with some extracts.

In our account of the original, we mentioned the accidental meeting, in a desert, of Sir Huon and his old servant Jerom, book i. st. 18-27, with particular approbation :-it is thus rendered by Mr. Sotheby:

Sudden the way that led deep rocks among
Sunk in a cavern, from whose pit profound
Sparkled a crackling flame: the stones around,
That o'er the night a wond'rous radiance flung,
Were fring'd with bushes, whose rude tangles green
Nodded the mazes of the clefts between:
And as they glitter'd with reflected rays
Shone like a verdant fire. In mute amaze
Motionless stood the knight amid th'enchanted scene.
At once a voice, that thro' the cavern rung,
"Halt!" thunders forth; strait stands the knight before
One of wild mien, whose mantle cover'd o'er
With cat-skins coarsely patch'd loose flapping hung
Down to his hairy shanks: in tangled flow,
His coal-black beard thick wav'd his breast below.
A ponderous branch from giant cedar torn,
Swung, like a mace, upon his shoulder borne,
Of pow'r the stoutest beast to level at a blow.

The knight, undaunted at his savage dress,
Club, and rough beard, and all that met his view,
In mother speech, no other speech he knew,
Begins the story of his sad distress.

"What hear I?" as his voice the woodman hears,
While down his hairy cheek stream joyful tears;
"Oh, mother tongue! oh, sweet melodious sound!
Full sixteen years the sun has journey'd round,
Nor has thy note, till now, e'er charm'd my longing ears.
"Welcome to Libanon, illustrious knight!

Tho' well I ween, no voluntary guest
You came, night-wanderer, to my dragon nest.
In peace repose thee, nor my welcome slight;
And freely take whate'er I have, the cheer
That Nature for her children caters here;

* See Rev. N. S. vol. xxiii. p. 576-584.

Yet

Yet grateful to the taste when hunger wrings;
And quaff my wine that in this cellar springs,

Pure draught that thins the blood, and makes the eye-sight clear."
• Charm'd by this greeting, where the savage trod,
Our hero follows gaily to the spot,

Lays by his helm and hauberk in the grot,
And stands unarm'd, in form a youthful god.
The woodman, bound in fascinating trance,
Thrills, as his eyes upon the stranger glance:
While, as he lifts the helmet from his head,
Down his slim shape his hair diffusely spread,
Floats like a stream of gold, and curls in wavy dance.

"How like! how like! Yes, limb for limb the same;
Breast, eye, mouth, hair," Like whom!' Sir Huon says:
"Pardon, young man! a dream of happier days
So sweet, yet, ah! so bitter, o'er me came.
Ah! no! delightful dream! thou art not true:
One moment seen, then vanish'd from the view-
Yet, down your back when fell that golden hair,
From head to foot himself, himself was there:

His breast alone more broad, your locks of yellower hue.

"Your's is my native speech: ah, not in vain,
Haply, in you my dearest lord I trace;
Whom now for sixteen years, in this wild place
Far, far from every friend, I lonely plain.
Ah! to survive him was the bitterest blow:
Alone one sweet reflection sooths my woe:
I clos'd his eyes; I laid him on the bier;
I shed on his fresh grave the farewell tear.
To see him here in you surpasses mortal show."

Chance,' Huon says, such sports so seeming strange Not rarely plays.'-" At least," exclaims his host,

"Chance, here, in what I feel, no part can boast.

The love I bear you, Sir, I dare engage,

Is truth, plain truth, and no illusion vain.
Good youth! to Sherasmin one favor deign!
Forgive! oh, let me call you by your name!"
Huon, the son and heir of peer of fame,

Duke Segewin the Brave, once Lord of fair Guyenne.
Fallen at his feet, he cries, with new delight,
"My heart deceiv'd me not-a thousand times
Welcome, 'mid houseless rocks and barbarous climes,
Son of the best, the bravest, worthiest knight;
With whom, companion of life's better day,
In many a pastime wild, and desperate fray,
I dar'd th'adventures youth alone atchieves.
You leap'd, a little child, in hanging sleeves,
When to the Holy Land we took our votive way.

« Who

"Who ever could have thought that once again,
We, after eighteen years, 'mid deserts hoar,
Should meet on Libanon's unfriendly shore?
Despair not, man of misery and pain!

Tho' hope's last glimmer sunk in darkness dies,
Again her star to light thy path shall rise.
Forgive that wild with joy, my tongue too bold,
Babbles at will; but, oh! 'bove all unfold

What storm has blown you here, to bless my longing eyes?" The involuntary dance of the monks and nuns, caused by the magic horn of Oberon, is thus described: (book ii, st. 32-38.)

A new adventure.-On that day befals
The yearly feast in honor of the name
Of holy Agatha, most gracious dame,
The guardian of these girl-confining walls:
And there, a gun-shot off, a convent stood
Of youths, St. Anthony's high-pamper'd brood,
That eve the cloyster race their choirs had join'd,
And both a common pilgrimage design'd.
As nun and monk befits in social neighbourhood.

Back they return'd, and near the cloyster moat
On as they wind, in order, pair by pair,
The rattling tempest thunders from the air;
Cross, standards, scapularies, wildly float,
Sport of the blasts; and thro' each folded veil
In torrents stream the rain and driving hail
All ranks and orders in confusion lost,
Mingle in comic mood, diversely tost,

And scamper here and there as wind and rain assail,
There, tuck'd up to the knee, a dainty nun
Wades thro' the brown morass: a brother here
Slips as he speeds, and thrown, sans grace or fear,
Amid the sisters that before him run,

Gripes, by her spindle shanks, some reverend damé.
Now, when the tempest lull'd, with languid frame,
Tir'd, out of breath, the mud-bespattered train
Sous'd head and foot, assemble once again,
And to the cloyster-court in crowds tumultuous came
Here, as they pant together, monks and nuns,
Pale thro' the convent gate that open stood,
'Mid the confusion of the cloyster brood
My Sherasmin with headlong fury runs:
That holy ground, like heav'n, he vainly deems,
And safe 'mid guardian saints himself esteems.
Soon Huon follows, and with courtly grace,
While he permission begs, and checks his pace,
Swift, as a meteor darts, the dwarf amid them gleams.

At once the storm is fled, serenely mild
Heav'n smiles around, bright rays the sky adorn,
While beauteous as an angel newly born
Beams in the roseate day-spring, glow'd the child,
A lily stalk his graceful limbs sustain'd,

Round his smooth neck an ivory horn was chain'd;
Yet lovely as he was, on all around

Strange horror stole, for stern the fairy frown'd,
And o'er each sadden'd charm a sullen anger reign'd.
He to his rosy lip the horn applies,
And breathes enchanting tones of fairy sound:
At once old Sherasmin in giddy round
Reels without stop-away the spinner fiies,
Seizes a hoary nun without a tooth,

Who dies to dance, as if the blood of youth
Boil'd in her veins: the old man deftly springs,
Bounds like a buck, while every caper flings
Her veil and gown in air, that all laugh loud forsooth:
⚫ Cloyster and convent burn with equal rage,
Nor hoary hairs, nor rank, the dance withstand:
Each sinner takes a sister by the hand,
And in the gay contention all engage.
Not soon such ballets shall be seen again;
No rules or discipline the choir restrain :
No tipsy fawn so bounds in wanton dance;
Huon unmov'd beholds the reeling trance,

While laughter shakes his breast to see the giddy train.'
The storm at sea, raised by the

angry

Oberon in consequence of the forbidden unhallowed union of Sir Huon and Amanda, or Rezia, will be our concluding specimen: (book vii.

st. 17-19.)

rage

At once the heav'ns are darken'd, quench'd each star!
Ah! happy pair! they knew it not—the wave
Howls as unfetter'd winds o'er ocean rave:
Their tempest-laden pinions roar from far!
They hear it not-with encircled round,
Stern Oberon flying thro' the gloom profound
Rushes before their face-they hear him not!
And thrice the thunder peals their boded lot :
And, ah! they hear it not, each sense in rapture drown'd!
Meanwhile the tumult maddens more and more;

Fierce from all sides at once a whirlwind breaks;
Rock'd by rude gusts the earth confus'dly shakes,
The welkin flames, with lightning vaulted o'er:
High in the air by surging tempests cast,
The world of waters bellows to the blast:
The vessel reels at random to and fro,

The boatswain calls in vain, while shrieks of woe

Ring thro' the staggering ship, all hope of safety past!

The