Chapter XLVI

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“The scene which Mr. Courtenay saw when he walked in suddenly to Mrs. Anderson’s drawing-room, was one so different in every way from what he had expected that he was for the first moment as much taken aback as any of the company. * * * The drawing-room, which looked out on the Lung’ Arno, was not small, but it was rather low—not much more than an _entresol_. There was a bright wood-fire on the hearth, and near it, with a couple of candles on a small table by her side, sat Kate, distinctly isolated from the rest, and working diligently, scarcely raising her eyes from her needle-work. The centre-table was drawn a little aside, for Ombra had found it too warm in front of the fire; and about this the other four were grouped—Mrs. Anderson, working too, was talking to one of the young men; the other was holding silk, which Ombra was winding; a thorough English domestic party—such a family group as should have gladdened virtuous eyes to see. Mr. Courtenay looked at it with indescribable surprise.”

MISTAKES OF MISAPPREHENSION.

Soon after Louis XIV. appointed Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, he inquired how the citizens liked their new Bishop, to which they answered, doubtfully: “Pretty well.” “But,” asked his Majesty, “what fault do you find with him?” “To say the truth,” they replied, “we should have preferred a Bishop who had finished his education; for, whenever we wait upon him, we are told that he is at his studies.”

There lived in the west of England, a few years since, an enthusiastic geologist, who was presiding judge of the Quarter Sessions. A farmer, who had seen him presiding on the bench, overtook him shortly afterwards, while seated by the roadside on a heap of stones, which he was busily breaking in search of fossils. The farmer reined up his horse, gazed at him for a minute, shook his head in commiseration of the mutability of human things, then exclaimed, in mingled tones of pity and surprise: “What, your Honor! be you come to this a’ ready?”

Cottle, in his _Life of Coleridge_, relates an essay at grooming on the part of that poet and Wordsworth. The servants being absent, the poets had attempted to stable their horse, and were almost successful. With the collar, however, a difficulty arose. After Wordsworth had relinquished as impracticable the effort to get it over the animal’s head, Coleridge tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessor; for, after twisting the poor horse’s neck almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse’s head must have grown (gout or dropsy) since the collar was put on, for he said it was downright impossibility for such a huge _os frontis_ to pass through so narrow a collar! Just at this moment a servant girl came up, and turning the collar upside down, slipped it off without trouble, to the great humility and wonderment of the poets, who were each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge to which they had not attained.

BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS.

A most entertaining volume might be made from the amusing and often absurd blunders perpetrated by translators. For instance, Miss Cooper tells us that the person who first rendered her father’s novel, “The Spy,” into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the following:—Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton family was called “The Locusts.” The translator referred to his dictionary, and found the rendering of the word to be _Les Sauterelles_, “The Grasshoppers.” But when he found one of the dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that purpose.

Much laughter has deservedly been raised at French _littérateurs_ who professed to be “_doctus utriusque linguæ_.” Cibber’s play of “Love’s Last Shift” was translated by a Frenchman who spoke “Inglees” as “_Le Dernière Chemise de l’Amour_;” Congreve’s “Mourning Bride,” by another, as “_L’Epouse du Matin_;” and a French scholar recently included among his catalogue of works on natural history the essay on “Irish Bulls,” by the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of “Macbeth,” renders “Out, out, brief candle!” as “_Sortez, chandelle_.” And another, who _traduced_ Shakspeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering Northumberland’s famous speech in “Henry IV.” In the passage

“Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, _so woe-begone_.”

the words italicized are rendered, “_ainsi douleur! va-t’en!_”—“so grief, be off with you!” Voltaire did no better with his translations of several of Shakspeare’s plays; in one of which the “myriad-minded” makes a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an avowed resolution to _carve_ for himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which, retranslated, reads, “What care I for lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat.”

The late centennial celebration of Shakspeare’s birthday in England called forth numerous publications relating to the works and times of the immortal dramatist. Among them was a new translation of “Hamlet,” by the Chevalier de Chatelain, who also translated Halleck’s “Alnwick Castle,” “Burns,” and “Marco Bozzaris.” Our readers are, of course, familiar with the following lines:—

“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Oh, fie! ’tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature, Possess it merely.”

The chevalier, less successful with the English than with the modern American poet, thus renders them into French:—

“_Fi donc! fi donc! Ces jours qu’on nous montrons superbes Sont un vilain jardin rempli de folles herbes, Qui donnent de l’ivraie, et certes rien de plus Si ce n’est les engines du cholera-morbus._”

Some of the funniest mistranslations on record have been bequeathed by Victor Hugo. Most readers will remember his rendering of a peajacket as _paletot a la purée de pois_, and of the Frith of Forth as _le cinquième de le quatrième_.

The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, knowing nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, “a Welsh rabbit,” rendered it literally by “_un lapin du pays de Galles_,” or a rabbit of Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland. A writer in the Neapolitan paper, _Il Giornale della due Sicilie_, was more ingenuous. He was translating from an English paper the account of a man who killed his wife by striking her with a poker; and at the end of his story the honest journalist, with a modesty unusual in his craft, said, “_Non sappiamo per certo se questo pokero Inglese sia uno strumento domestico o bensi chirurgico_”—“We are not quite certain whether this English poker [_pokero_] be a domestic or surgical instrument.”

In the course of the famous Tichborne trial, the claimant, when asked the meaning of _laus Deo semper_, said it meant “the laws of God forever, or permanently.” An answer not less ludicrous was given by a French Sir Roger, who, on being asked to translate _numero Deus impare gaudet_, unhesitatingly replied, “Le numéro deux se réjouit d’être impair.”

Some of the translations of the Italian operas in the librettos, which are sold to the audience, are ludicrous enough. Take, for instance, the lines in _Roberto il diavolo_,—

Egli era, dicessi Abitatore Del tristo Imperio.

Which some smart interpreter rendered—

“For they say he was A citizen of the black emporium.”

Misquotations.

In Mr Collins’ account of Homer’s Iliad, in Blackwood’s _Ancient Classics for English Readers_, occurs the following:—

... “The spirit horsemen who rallied the Roman line in the great fight with the Latins at Lake Regillus, the shining stars who lighted the sailors on the stormy Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in which St. Paul was cast away.”

If the reader will take the trouble to refer to the _Acts of the Apostles_, xxviii. 11. he will find, that the ship of Alexandria, “whose sign was Castor and Pollux,” was not the vessel in which St. Paul was shipwrecked near Malta, but the ship in which he safely voyaged from the island of “the barbarous people” to Puteoli for Rome.

The misquotations of Sir Walter Scott have frequently attracted attention. One of the most unpardonable occurs in _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_,