Chapter 79
Section 79 of Curiosities of Literature, Volume 2. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jason in Panama. Curiosities of Literature, Volume 2, by Isaac Disraeli. Ben Johnson on Translation.
I have discovered a poem by this great poet, which has escaped the researches of all his editors. Prefixed to a translation, translation is the theme, with us an unvalued art, because our translators have usually been the jobbers of booksellers, but no inglorious one among our French and Italian rivals. In this poem, if the reader's ear be guided by the compressed sense of the mass of lines, he may feel a rhythm which, should they be read like our modern meter,
he will find wanting. Here the fullness of the thoughts forms their own cadences. The mind is musical as well as the ear. One verse running into another, and the sense often closing in the middle of a line, is the club of Hercules. Dryden sometimes succeeded in it, Churchill abused it, and Cowper attempted to revive it. Great force of thought only can wield this verse. On the author, work, and translator prefixed to the translation of Mateo Aleman's
Spanish Rogue, 1623, who tracks this author's or translator's pen shall find, that either hath read books and men, to say but one were single. Then it chimes, when the old words do speak on the new times, as in this Spanish proteus, who, though writ but in one tongue, was formed with the world's wit, and hath the noblest mark of a good book, that an ill man dares not securely look upon it, but will loathe, or let it pass, as a deformed faith doth a true glass. Such books
deserve translators of like coat, as was the genius wherewith they were wrote. And this hath met that one, and may be stilled more than the foster father of this child. For though Spain gave him his first heir and vogue, he would be called, henceforth, the English rogue. But that he's too well suited in a cloth finer than was his Spanish, if my oath will be received in court, if not, would I have clothed him so? Here's all I can supply to your desert who have done it, friend.
And this fair emulation and no envy is, when you behold me, wish myself, the man that would have done that which you only can. Ben Johnson. The translator of Guzman was James Mabbe, which he disguised under the Spanish pseudonym of Diego Puede Ser. Diego for James and Puede Ser for Mabbe or Maybe. He translated with the same spirit as his Guzman, Celestina, or the Spanish bawd, that singular tragicomedy, a version still more remarkable. He had resided a considerable
time in Spain, and was a perfect master of both languages. A rare talent in a translator, and the consequence is, that he is a translator of genius.
