Led by the shrieks of horror ran with like eager speed, The first line of the original "where they heard the women so fearfully lamenting," is translated with tolerable accuracy, "led by the shrieks of horror;" but the words "ran with like eager speed" have no counterpart in the original; the German is simply kômen, go. They however went from bed and without putting on their day apparel. Line second is in the original, "then some of them thought," or "it occurred to some of them that they ought to have clothes on." This refers to the heroes themselves, to whom coming suddenly, overcome by the news, in night-clothes or undress, it first occurred after they arrived at the place where the women were bewailing Siegfried's death, that they were not suitably dressed to be in ladies' society. Mr. Lettsom translates, "some of the household fancied they came for funeral weed," following probably Dr. Braunfels, who followed an antiquated explanation by Lachmann. The true rendering is apparent when the third and fourth lines are taken as an excuse for the heroes' sudden bewilderment and failure to stop to dress on hearing the report of Siegfried's death. Nothing is more marked in the Middle German literature, than the purely sensuous, concrete character, both of the language and the ideas. It ought to be one of the chief aims of a translator to preserve just this character, and by a faithful adherence to the concrete method of describing things, much more could be done for a genuine translation of the poem than by the reproduction of a peculiar metre or the insertion of obsolete vocables. Mr. Lettsom translates stanza 947 of the Lachmann edition, as follows. It is the picture of the chamberlain discovering Siegfried laid dead at the door of Kriemhild's apartment. He saw him blood-bespattered, with weed* all dabbled o'er; *Used in the Spenserian sense of clothing. The German gives the last line, "bî dem vil leidiu mære vrouwe Kriemhild ervant," by which Lady Kriemhild learned very sad news. The idea of looking "on such deep horror" is very unlike Middle German, removed a great way from the simple objective story of the poet. He would never call a dead hero a horror, or apply to the concrete object the abstract term that may be evoked by a consideration of the circumstances. In Mr. Lettsom's stanza 37 we find the same infidelity to the concrete as well as the previously noted combination of archaisms and diffuseness: Old and young together fiercely hurtling flew, That the shivered lances swept the welkin through; From hand of mighty champions; all there was deftly done. Here are, one might fairly claim, two if not three archaisms, but the sensuous ideas of hearing the crashing encounter and seeing the flying splinters, so prominent in the original, are lost, and we have an abstracter presentation enlarged by the superfluous and unpoetical expressions, "swept the welkin through," and "many a one." Mr. Lettsom's 998 is one of the strophes which Lachmann rejected as spurious, as the emendation of some late "bearbeiter." It has no possible raison d'être in the relations in which it is found. There are, Mr. Lettsom tells us, or tries to tell us, in his preface, one hundred and forty-three stanzas in Dr. Braunfels' German, mostly from the Lassberg manuscript which Lachmann rejected. "As Dr. Braunfels," he proceeds, "has inserted them in his text, and both he and Dr. Simrock have modernized them, I did not like to leave them out, though some of them might better have been omitted." Of these, 998 is one, and Lachmann added it merely as a note at the bottom of the page, on which it would be printed if put into the text. We agree with Mr. Lettsom that this strophe might have been better omitted. Furthermore, he cannot have the name of the judicious Simrock to uphold him in his following of the comparatively unknown Braunfels. Dr. Simrock has not modernized this strophe in the same sense that he has published it in the German version of the poem. Is it then the grand old poem that Mr. Lettsom wishes to give us? Even the little light of his own judgment as to probability of genuineness he does not follow, but takes Dr. Braunfels and gives him to an English public. But even Dr. Braunfels is shabbily treated, as it is implied that he was unwise to insert the strophes. So there is not fidelity to the old poem, for there is not fidelity to Lachmann, who is admitted by the translator to be the acutest critic of the epic, nor fidelity to the unimportant Dr. Braunfels, nor fidelity to the perception of poetic fitness in his own mind in the selections or rejections of Mr. Lettsom. As to the translation in Mr. Lettsom's 998, Lachmann's 910, 5, it is unpoetical and incorrect, which circumstances do not extenuate its being an interruption to the narrative. The three stanzas of which it is the second are as follows. (The time is the lunch just after the hunt, the occasion of Siegfried's murder.) 997. Then spake the chief of Trony, "Ye noble knights, and bold, I know just to our wishes a runnel clear and cold Close by, so be not angry, but thither let us go." Th' advice brought many a champion sorrow and mortal woe. 998. Yet could not then his danger* the death-doom'd hero spy. His heart knew nought of falsehood; 'twas open, frank, and plain, 999. The noble knight, Sir Siegfried, with thirst was sore opprest, But straight would to the mountain the running brook to find, That the rendering shows a formal rather than a genuine appreciation of the poetry, such a stanza as 987 after the above quotations will be sufficient to confirm. The bear which Siegfried had captured on the hunt and bound to his horse is set free on arriving at the camping-place, and the dogs pursue it through the kitchen to the detriment of utensils and the fright of attendants. In the old poem the strophe reveals in a thoroughly natural, naïve way the effect (alarming indeed at times to common people) of the outflow and exuberance of Siegfried's bright, inherent greatness. Mr. Lettsom's version presents us the following grotesque dilution: *For the good reason that there was nothing in the world to indicate danger. 987. Scared by the din and uproar he through the kitchen rac'd. Ah! how the cooks and scullions from round the fire he chaced! Roast, boiled, and stewed, together were hissing in the ashes. The last lines give a droll idea of the methods of cooking adopted on a medieval hunting expedition. The striking description of Hagen, the heroic villain of the poem, the single marked descriptive strophe in the entire epic. (for most of the characters come into our conception by what they do or possibly wear, not by any modern fashion of portrayal), has not fared much better at the hands of Mr. Lettsom, though there is a touch of genius in the original that cannot be wholly obscured. 1789. Well grown and well compacted was that redoubted guest; Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest. Even here we have the metre patched out with redundant words and the ubiquitous archaism. If the strophes already quoted are not enough to prove that this translation is of little value, they certainly show that it is not a poem. A perfectly literal rendering of this Middle German epic could not be metrical, but it would faithfully preserve the flavor of the original. A metrical version of this poem, to be successful, must take one of two directions, either towards the scrupulous exactness of Longfellow's Dante, or the poetical, creative freedom of Chapman's Homer. Mr. Lettsom's translation of a modernized version, that is, of another translation, could not take the former direction. His want of poetical perception made it impossible for him to give his readers anything of the latter order. So we have this version, neither accurate nor poetical, neither critical nor creative, not conceived in the peculiar tone of the original, and destitute of the Middle German flavor. This rendering required nine years in order to reach a second edition. Before it shall pass to a third it is to be hoped that a translation, in one of the two proper senses of that word, may have supplanted it altogether. ARTICLE VI.-LOGOS AND COSMOS: NATURE AS RELATED TO LANGUAGE. [Concluded from page 533.] II. NATURE. OUR aim, in the preceding section, was to set forth certain leading principles which lie at the foundation of all language, and to show the part they fill and something of the manner of their working, namely: (1) that general words are a necessity of language; (2) that their employment in combina tion is likewise indispensable; (3) that a full supply of such words as are of wide generality is requisite, inasmuch as words of this character form the most essential part of language; and, finally, we considered the processes by which language grows and is developed and adapts itself, and particularly as they are seen to depend on these same principles of generalization and combination. Word-combination, as we defined it, is the union of two or more words as applied to one and the same thought-object. The words, except when one of them is a proper name, are connotative of attributes appertaining to the object. Transitive words are applied to two objects, and thus united with two other words. The ground-principle is the same in every kind of combination, whether predicative or attributive or objective or whatever it may be. Combination is indispensable both as an economy and as the only means of conveying new conceptions. Now-turning to the other side of the subject-since the objects of thought to be signified by words are furnished to our minds by the world that surrounds us, a certain constitution of the world is a necessity in order that language may have those characteristics which we see to be requisite. The wonderful manner in which the world we inhabit is adapted to the mind of man, so as to be brought within its grasp and under its dominion and facile management, as respects the exigencies of language,-even as it is for all other purposes, whether prac tical or purely intellectual,-has a valid claim upon the atten |