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especially needful, "the unfortunate " in question is altogether silent. We allude to his translation of "Unerhörtes hört sich nicht," (the Unheard of or Supernatural cannot be heard), as "the Unheard hears itself not." The pomposity with which our Westminster friend expounded the passage was vastly amusing, as well as the virtuous indignation with which he chafed at Mr. Gurney's version, who, avoiding this rather extraordinary Germanism, had simply said, "Sight is blinded, hearing lost." We observe, by the bye, that he is more literal in his new version of this scene, translating—

"List yon trumpets, elves astounded!

Sight is blinded, hearing wounded,
None the unearthly tones may hear."

And now, to adopt a more serious tone-is it not a great misfortune for literary men, that such self-sufficient and ignorant critics as he of the Westminster should be enabled to lord it over unfortunate authors, and to crush their budding hopes by his inexorable fiat of doom? Ignorance should at least be charitable; it requires charity itself, and what it needs it should bestow. In this case we have a young writer bringing his first production before the public, in modest monthly Numbers-a production which has probably cost him much labour, and which has merit enough to draw forth the most enthusiastic encomiums from German critics-(for we see, from Mr. Gurney's advertisements, that the Berlinese Magazine has also most favourably noticed his work)-we see this production, I say, brought forward by an author who has passed, as he has himself informed us, almost half his life in Germany; and yet he is told by a Quarterly Critic, who assumes a tone of the most arrogant superiority, that a few lessons in German would improve his knowledge of his author's meaning-that he is liable to the charge of perpetual misconception-that his poem is one of the most tedious the reviewer ever met with, and as unlike Goethe as it was possible to make it—and finally, that it was a "distortion," which ought never to have been brought before the public. And all this, remember, in an article in which the reviewer contrives to expose his own ignorance of German by half a dozen grammatical errors within the space of two pages. This is really stupendous. We shall now leave the delinquent reviewer to his, we trust, repentant meditations, entreating him to abandon all German subjects to some one or other of his coadjutors, and find out some field for himself in which he may be more at home. And now we must proceed to give our readers some extracts from Mr. Gurney's translation before we conclude these remarks, which have stretched to far beyond their intended length, but have not been entirely thrown away, if they have tended to expose one of those abuses, which are, alas! but too common in the critical world-the condemnation, namely, of deserving authors by critics who are utterly incapacitated, by their own ignorance, from forming any opinion, whether for good or for evil, on the subject of the particular works which these authors may have produced. One of the most flagrant instances of this occurs when a translator is violently

condemned, and declared to be ignorant of the language he is translating, by a man who knows very little about that language himself. But leaving this subject once for all, we shall now endeavour to give an example of Mr. Gurney's renderings of the various styles, both light and serious, which diversify this extraordinary work. And first, we will commence with the following comic but singular passage, in which the alliteration of the words in the original has been closely followed in the translation. It occurs in the midst of the Classical Walpurgis Night, or meeting of classic spectres on the plains of Pharsalia, in which Mephistopheles finds himself rather out of place, but still, being a devil who has seen the world, endeavours to adapt himself to existing circumstances, and thus courteously addresses the sphinxes and griffins around him :—

"Hail to the beauteous maids, the greybeards wise!

Griffin (snarling).

Not greybeard, Sir, but griffin. No relation
Betwixt those words, be sure, Sir. Words assume
The primal nature of their derivation :

Grey, grumbling, grating, groaning, grannam, groom-
Each odious sound our learned ears dismays;
I hate your grims and grums, I hate your greys.
Mephistopheles.

Without the slightest wish to start a tiffin,

I must remark that GRIF forms part of GRIFFIN.
Griffin (snarling as above, and so ever after).

Me, Sir, your base suggestions cannot pain,

For ignorance was ever wisdom's bane.

Know, Griffin comes from Gripe. Oh, word sublime!
Revered in every age, 'neath every clime.

Know he on earth has loudest cause to boast,

Who grasps the foremost and who gripes the most."

We shall now pass to the Third Scene of the Third Act, the greater part of which, our readers will observe, is not rhymed. The passage we shall next quote is extremely beautiful in the original, and in a metre not easy to translate. A few explanatory observations will be needful to make what follows clearly intelligible. Faust, in this extraordinary work, is supposed to be united with Helen, and they are imagined to have dwelt for some time in a spacious cavern in Arcady with Phorcyas as their attendant, whilst Helen's maidens are slumbering at the mouth of the cavern. Phorcyas at last issues from it and awakes the sleepers. They start up and demand to know what things may have befallen their mistress whilst they were lost in their magic slumber. The ancient hag replies :

Phorcyas.

"Hearken, then! In yonder caverns, yonder bowers and grottoes smiling, Home and shelter have been granted, as to some fond rural lovers,

To our lord and fairest lady.

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From the world, with me alone as faithful servant, dwelt they gladly.

Highly honoured stood I near them, but, as confidantes beseemeth,

Gazed I round for other pastime. Turned now here, now there in silence,
Roots, and bark, and herbs collecting, each of health the source and fountain,
And they thus remained alone.

Chorus.

Ha! thou speak'st as if within these subterranean worlds were lying,
Woods and meadows, lakes and rivers-are thy legends false or true?
Phorcyas.

True in sooth, ye giddy maidens ! there lurk fathomless abysses,

Halls and courts that never end them-lost in thought through these I passed. Of a sudden, mirthful laughter echoes through the cave's recesses;

And behold a boy of beauty to and fro is lightly springing

From the mother to the father: and the greetings, the caresses,
Eager love's delighted toyings, cries of joy and mirthful antics,
They confused my wondering soul.

He, a naked wingless genius, like a fawn without his wildness,

Leaps upon the ground beneath him; but the ground with quick reaction
Casts him upward to the ether, and thus twice, thus thrice rebounding,
He the o'erarching vaults attains.

Wildly anxious cries the mother-Spring and leap as best thou pleasest,
But beware, beware, thou fly'st not; flight, my child, to thee's denied.
And the loving father counsels :-In the earth that power resideth,
Which impels thee upwards-let thy foot but touch the earth in passing,
And, like famed Antaeus, quickly thou shalt new won vigour gain.
Thus then, springs he on the rock's o'erhanging brow, and o'er the chasm
Leaps to yonder cliff beyond it, like a ball that flies through air.
But, behold! within a fissure's gaping rent, he now hath vanished,
And for ever lost appears he. Mother weeps, and father whispers

Words of comfort-awe-struck stand I. But what sight again behold we?

Lay concealed there wondrous treasures? Garments, all with flowers embroidered, He hath donned with graceful care.

Ribbons round his arms are waving, fillets round his breast have turned them;

In his hand the golden lyre, like a youthful Phoebus beaming,

Steps he on the cliff above us, to the rocky edge; we wonder,
And the parents all delighted, join in rapture's fond embrace.

But what shines around his tresses? What may mean those beams of glory?
Fall they from some golden circlet, or from genius' inward fire?
Thus he moves in graceful measure, even as boy himself revealing,
As the future Lord of Beauty, in whose light and youthful members
Music seems to dwell and linger; and e'en thus shall ye behold him-
Thus shall hear his voice of magic-gaze, and wonder, and admire."

At last Euphorion (who typifies Poetical Genius, and more especially Lord Byron) issues from the cavern with Faust and Helen, and a beautiful scene follows. Euphorion longs to soar on high, and is with difficulty restrained by his parents. (All this scene is supposed to be sung.)

Helen and Faust.

"Child of Love, child of Hope,

Boy whom we cherish,

Give not thy feelings scope,

Or thou must perish !

O'er yon vale's borders
Mirthfully stray.

Euphorion.

But for your orders

Here I delay."

And then he entwines himself amongst the chorus, and draws them into the dance, singing, as they move in ever-changing circles-

Euphorion and Chorus.

"When, thou, thy arms so bright
Softly entwinest;

When 'neath thy tresses' night
Starlike thou shinest;
When thy light feet have past
Over the earth so fast,
Like zephyrs soft in air

Speeding now here, now there;
Then is thy charms' spell cast
O'er us, fair child 1

All the most cold and wild
Love thee at last."

But all is in vain. These delights cannot detain the fugitive. The trump of glory calls him from afar. He mounts on high and sees Greece in the distance, a field of war and strife. He feels himself bound to aid its inhabitants in their conflict with their oppressors, and soars ever higher in order to pass the mountains which surround the vale. Till now he has only sprung from cliff to cliff, but at last he feels wings expanding, and resolves to fly. Alas! his temerity leads but to his ruin, and he falls dead at his parents' feet. We wished to quote the entire of the mourning dirge which follows-and which would be the more interesting to the English reader, from its evident allusion to Byron's fate-but this our space forbids. Here, however, is an

extract:

"Born to cull earth's fairest blossoms,
Sprung from sires who high held sway,
Thou, alas on falsest bosoms
Casted'st youth and love away.
Thine was eyesight keen and rarest,
For each sorrow pity mild,
Kindest love of woman fairest,
And the song of genius wild."

And here we must, at last, bring this article to a close, but without further apologizing for its length. All the hideous rudeness and repulsive ignorance exhibited in the Westminster arise from the fact that the Editor exercises no control over his attendant gnomes. We have heard that the present Editor is a very worthy cordwainer in Smithfield. If so, we entreat him to remember the adage, “Ne sutor ultra crepidam," and then we promise him that he shall have the last from us.

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ART. XII.-The Despatches of Hernando Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, addressed to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; written during the Conquest, and containing a Narrative of its Events. Now first translated from the original Spanish, by George Folum. New York: Wiley & Putnam.

COLUMBUS, Cortes, and Pizarro-discoverer of the New World, the conquerors of Mexico and Peru! Before these names how puny look the moderns-for what a confidence in their mission do these men exhibit! Cortes always surprised and took captive our imagination, but these Despatches certainly are well calculated to place him equally high in our judgment. We shall first give a slight sketch of the history of the present Letters-next the early circumstances of the life of Cortes-and then proceed to the very extraordinary Epistles themselves. The translation before us is made from an edition of the

Correspondence published by Archbishop, afterwards Cardinal Lorenzana, in Mexico, in 1770. The original editions, probably manyfor the letters were published in Spain on their reception-have, we believe, all disappeared. Mr. Rich, the American bookseller, valued a copy of the original edition of the third letter, in his possession, given in the present translation, at ten guineas. Antonio de Solis, in 1684, confesses himself then indebted to an Italian translation for any knowledge of them. They were, however, republished in Spain, in 1749, in the "Historiadores Primitivos." No trace of the first letter is extant. The second was printed at Seville, in 1522; the third in 1523; the fourth at Toledo, in 1525.

We now proceed to the circumstances attendant on the early life of the conqueror of Mexico. It is scarce necessary for us here to advert, having in a previous article done so, to the history of Columbus, or that mistake which led him to suppose that he should arrive at the Indies by a western route; one curious point of which prepossession may, however, be noticed that he took with him several persons skilled in Arabic, to serve as interpreters in Mahometan countries. In 1502 and 1504 he examined the coast of Central America, from the Bay of Honduras to the Spanish Main. Cuba naturally became the point whence, from its proximity, future adventurers sallied forth, to realise the mighty ideal of Columbus, and to explore his world. The governor of Cuba at this time was Diego Velasquez; in 1518 he equipped an expedition of discovery. This expedition determined Yucatan to be a portion of the main land, and not, as it had been previously considered, an island. The rumoured success of this expedition, which then had not returned, led to the projection of a second, in which the choice of Velasquez fell on his brother-in-law, Hernando Cortes, as the fittest person to conduct it. Educated in Spain, at the University of Salamanca, Cortes had caught the spirit of the hour, and even preferred the New World as a theatre for action to the victorious

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