" This, we think, is hardly the English of
_Le Poete Campagnard_, and almost recalls Lieberkuehn's theory of
translation, toward which Lessing was so unrelenting,--"When I do not
understand a passage, why, I translate it word for word." On page 149,
"Miss Sara Sampson" is called "the first social tragedy of the German
Drama." All tragedies surely are _social_, except the "Prometheus."
_Buergerliche Tragoedie_ means a tragedy in which the protagonist is taken
from common life, and perhaps cannot be translated clearly into English
except by "tragedy of middle-class life." So on page 170 we find Emilia
Galotti called a "Virginia _bourgeoise_," and on page 172 a hospital
becomes a _lazaretto_. On page 190 we have a sentence ending in this
strange fashion: "in an episode of the English original, which Wieland
omitted entirely, one of its characters nevertheless appeared in the
German tragedy." On page 205 we have the Seven Years' War called "a
bloody _process_." This is mere carelessness, for Mr. Evans, in the
second volume, translates it rightly "_lawsuit_." What English reader
would know what "You are intriguing me" means, on page 228? On page 264,
Vol. II., we find a passage inaccurately rendered, which we consider of
more consequence, because it is a quotation from Lessing.
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