PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR
TO THE FIRST EDITION
The two Dramas, Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein,
and Wallenstein, are introduced in the original
manuscript by a Prelude in one Act, entitled Wallenstein's
Camp. This is written in rhyme, and in nine-syllable verse, in
the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted)
with the second Eclogue of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.
This Prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not
deficient in character; but to have translated it into prose, or
into any other metre than that of the original, would have
given a false notion both of its style and purport; to have translated
it into the same metre would have been incompatible with
a faithful adherence to the sense of the German, from the comparative
poverty of our language in rhymes; and it would have
been unadvisable from the incongruity of those lax verses with
the present taste of the English Public. Schiller's intention
seems to have been merely to have prepared his reader for the
Tragedies by a lively picture of the laxity of discipline, and the
mutinous dispositions of Wallenstein's soldiery. It is not
necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it
has been thought expedient not to translate it.
The admirers of Schiller, who have abstracted their conception
of that author from the Robbers, and the Cabal and Love, plays
in which the main interest is produced by the excitement of
curiosity, and in which the curiosity is excited by terrible and
extraordinary incident, will not have perused without some
portion of disappointment the Dramas, which it has been my
employment to translate. They should, however, reflect that
these are Historical Dramas, taken from a popular German History;
that we must therefore judge of them in some measure
with the feelings of Germans; or by analogy, with the interest
excited in us by similar Dramas in our own language. Few,
I trust, would be rash or ignorant enough to compare Schiller
with Shakspeare yet, merely as illustration, I would say
that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not
from Lear or Othello, but from Richard the Second, or the
three parts of Henry the Sixth. We scarcely expect rapidity
in an Historical Drama; and many prolix speeches are
pardoned from characters, whose names and actions have
formed the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other
hand, there exist in these plays more individual beauties,
more passages the excellence of which will bear reflection,
than in the former productions of Schiller. The description of
the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the Young Lover,
which follow it, form in the original a fine poem; and my
translation must have been wretched indeed, if it can have
wholly overclouded the beauties of the Scene in the first Act of
the first Play between Questenberg, Max, and Octavio Piccolomini.
If we except the Scene of the setting sun in the
Robbers,
I know of no part in Schiller's Plays which equals the whole
of the first Scene of the fifth Act of the concluding Play. It
would be unbecoming in me to be more diffuse on this subject.
A Translator stands connected with the original Author by
a certain law of subordination, which makes it more decorous
to point out excellencies than defects: indeed he is not likely
to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his
own labour will mingle with the feelings that arise from an
afterview of the original. Even in the first perusal of a work
in any foreign language which we understand, we are apt to
attribute to it more excellence than it really possesses from our
own pleasurable sense of difficulty overcome without effect.
Translation of poetry into poetry is difficult, because the Translator
must give a brilliancy to his language without that warmth
of original conception, from which such brilliancy would follow
of its own accord. But the translator of a living Author is
encumbered with additional inconveniences. If he render his
original faithfully, as to the sense of each passage, he must
necessarily destroy a considerable portion of the spirit; if he
endeavour to give a work executed according to laws of compensation,
he subjects himself to imputations of vanity, or
misrepresentation. I have thought it my duty to remain
bound by the sense of my original, with as few exceptions as
the nature of the languages rendered possible.
