We have seldom seen a
translation which read more easily, or was generally more faithful. That
Mr. Evans should nod now and then we do not wonder, nor that he should
sometimes choose the wrong word. We have only compared him with the
original where we saw reason for suspecting a slip; but, though we have
not found much to complain of, we have found enough to satisfy us that
his book will gain by a careful revision. We select a few oversights,
mainly from the first volume, as examples. On page 34, comparing Lessing
with Goethe on arriving at the University, Mr. Evans, we think, obscures,
if he does not wholly lose the meaning, when he translates _Leben_ by
"social relations," and is altogether wrong in rendering _Patrizier_ by
"aristocrat." At the top of the next page, too, "suspicious" is not the
word for _bedenklich_. Had he been writing English, he would surely have
said "questionable." On page 47, "overtrodden shoes" is hardly so good as
the idiomatic "down at the heel." On page 104, "A very humorous
representation" is oddly made to "confirm the documentary evidence." The
reverse is meant. On page 115, the sentence beginning "the tendency in
both" needs revising. On page 138, Mr. Evans speaks of the "Poetical
Village-younker of Destouches.
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