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as

if it had been guilty of the transgression *"

In the same scene of the puppet-show, the scraps of the old Moorish ballad are translated by Motteux with a corresponding naïveté of expression, which it seems to me impossible to exceed.

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* Smollet has here mistaken the sense of the original, como si ellos tuvieran la culpa del maleficio: She did not blame the hair for being guilty of the transgression or offence, but for being the cause of the Moor's transgression, or, as Motteux has properly translated it, "this affront." In another part of the same chapter, Smollet has likewise mistaken the sense of the original. When the boy remarks, that the Moors don't observe much form or ceremony in their judicial trials, Don Quixote contradicts him, and tells him there must always be a regular process and examination of evidence to prove matters of fact, para sacar una verdad en limpio, menester son muchas pruebas y repruebas." Smollet applies this observation of the Knight to the boy's long-winded story, and translates the passage, "There is not so much proof " and counter proof required to bring truth to light." In both these passages Smollet has departed from his prototype, Jarvis.

Jugando está á las tablas Don Gayféros,

Que ya de Melisendra está olvidado.

"Now Gayferos the live-long day,

"Oh, errant shame! at draughts doth play;
"And, as at court most husbands do,

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Forgets his lady fair and true." Motteur.

"Now Gayferos at tables playing,

"Of Melisendra thinks no more." Smollet.

Caballero, si á Francia ides,

Por Gayféros preguntad.

"Quoth Melisendra, if perchance,

"Sir Traveller, you go for France,

"For pity's sake, ask, when you're there,

"For Gayferos, my husband dear." Motteux.

Sir Knight, if you to France do go, "For Gayferos inquire." Smollet.

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How miserably does the new translation sink in the above comparison! Yet Smollet a good poet, and most of the verse translations interspersed through this work are executed with ability. It is on this head that Motteux has assumed to himself the

greatest licence. He has very presumptuously mutilated the poetry of Cervantes, by leaving out many entire stanzas from the larger compositions, and suppressing some of the smaller altogether: Yet the translation of those parts which he has retained, is possessed of much poetical merit; and in particular, those verses which are of a graver cast, are, in my opinion, superior to those of his rival. The song in the first volume, which in the original is entitled, Cancion de Grisóstomo, and which Motteux has entitled, The Despairing Lover, is greatly abridged by the suppression of more than one-half of the stanzas in the original; but the translation, so far as it goes, is highly poetical. The translation of this song by Smollet, though inferior as a poem, is, perhaps, more valuable on the whole, because more complete. There is, however, only a single passage, in which he maintains with Motteux a contest which is nearly equal; U 4

O thou, whose cruelty and hate,

The tortures of my breast proclaim,

Behold, how willingly to fate

I offer this devoted frame.

If thou, when I am past all pain,

Shouldst think my fall deserves a tear,

Let not one single drop distain

Those eyes, so killing and so clear. No! rather let thy mirth display

The joys that in thy bosom glow: Ah! need I bid that heart be gay,

Which always triumph'd in my woe.

Smollet.

Ir will be allowed that there is much merit in these lines, and that the last stanza in particular is eminently beautiful and delicate. Yet there is, in my opinion, an equal vein of poetry, and more passion, in the corresponding verses of Motteux:

O thou, by whose destructive hate
I'm hurry'd to this doleful fate,

When I'm no more, thy pity spare!

I dread thy tears; oh, spare them then

But, oh! I rave, I was too vain

My death can never cost a tear! Motteur.

IN the song of Cardenio, there is a happy combination of tenderness of expression with ingenious thought; the versification is likewise of a peculiar structure, the second

line forming an echo to the first.

The song

has been translated in a corresponding measure both by Motteux and Smollet; but by the latter with far inferior merit.

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