Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2 — Ben Johnson on Translation
BEN JONSON 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 massive lines, he may feel a rhythm which, should they be read like our modern metre, he will find wanting; here the fulness 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, WORKE, _and_ TRANSLATOR, _prefixed to the translation of Mateo Alemans's Spanish Rogue_, 1623. Who tracks this author's or translator's pen Shall finde, that either hath read bookes, and men: To say but one were single.
Then it chimes, When the old words doe strike 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 marke of a good booke, That an ill man dares not securely looke Upon it, but will loath, or let it passe, As a deformed face doth a true glasse.
Such bookes deserve translators of like coate As was the genius wherewith they were wrote;
And this hath met that one, that may be stil'd More than the foster-father of this child;
For though Spaine gave him his first ayre and vogue He would be call'd, henceforth, _the English rogue_, But that hee's too well suted, in a cloth Finer than was his Spanish, if my oath Will be receiv'd in court; if not, would I Had cloath'd him so!
Here's all I can supply To your desert who have done it, friend!
And this Faire aemulation, and no envy is;
When you behold me wish myselfe, the man That would have done, that, which you only can!
BEN JONSON.
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 _May-be_!
He translated, with the same spirit as his Guzman, _Celestina, or the Spanish Bawd_, that singular tragi-comedy,--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.
