EDWARD FITZGERALD'S WORKS.* WE trust that this handsome edition will

find a welcome among the "mixed Britons of England," as the editor puts it, as well as among the "English of America." Some kindred spirits there have been from the first, even when the marvellous version of Omar Kbayykm was relegated to the "penny box," who appreciated Mr. Fitzgerald's genius ; yet he is still unknown to many who are quite capable of understanding and admiring him. To admire, indeed, is easier than to criticise him in any satisfactory way. His translations are, in their way, incom- parable; yet no theory of translation could be founded upon them, and any one who should attempt to imitate his method would, almost to a certainty, make an egregious failure. Some- times he is exact, so that a translator of the laborious wordd or. word school could hardly be more faithful; sometimes he para- phrases with remarkable felicity; sometimes he gives what has an external resemblance to the original; and not nnfrequently he absolutely invents. Again and again in the notes which the editor of these volumes has added to the translation of Omar Faulyyttm, we find, "Not in Nicolas," meaning that the stanza has no counterpart in the Persian original (edited by M. Nicolas); or, "A close paraphrase of the Persian words, but conveying a totally different sense ;" or, "Fitzgerald has re- placed the original with a superior idea." And any one who will compare the version of the Agamemnon with the Greek original, will see that the same method, if it may be so called, has been followed. Yet the general result is marvellously effec- tive, the most remarkable thing about it being that the additions axe, generally speaking, undiscoverable by internal criticism. What is really Mr. Fitzgerald's might have been Omar's or /Eschylus's. Take these four stanzas, for instance :—

"Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai

Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Salida after Sultfin with his Pomp Abode his destin'd Hour, and went his way.

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamehyd gloried and drank deep : And Babrim, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, bat cannot break his Sleep.

• The Worts of Edward Fitzgerald. 2 vole. Boston, U.S.A.: Hozzglzton and WWII; London; Bernard Quarlteb. 1887.

I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Closer bled ; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Drop; in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

And this reviving Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean— Alt, lean upon it lightly ! for who knows From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen I" Who would guess that the third is "not in Nicolas's Persian text" f This was surely a remarkable art, the weaving-in of new threads so that they are undistinguishable from the rest of the texture.

We turn to the Agamemnon, and find much the same kind of

work. Here is a version, if we may call it so, of the passage beginning, /3if3stag Aippa Stci =Tar:— "Like a dream through sleep she glided

Through the silent city gate, By a guilty Hermes guided

On the feather'd feet of Theft;

Leaving between those she left And those she fled to, lighted Discord, Unextingnishable Hats; Leaving him whom least she should, Menelaus brave and good, Scarce believing in the mutter'd Rumour, is the worse than atter'd Omen of the wailing maidens, Of the shaken hoary head : Of deserted board and bed.

For the phantom of the lost one Haunts him in the wonted places ; Hall and Chamber, which be paces Hither, Thither, listening, looking, Phantom-like himself alone; Till he comes to loathe the faces Of the marble mute Colossi, Godlike Forms, and half-divine, Founders of the Royal line, Who with all unalter'd Quiet Witness all and make no sign.

But the silence of the chambere, And the shaken hoary head, And the voices of the mourning Women, and of ocean wailing, Over which with unavailing Arms he reaches, as to hail

The phantom of a flying sail—

All but answer, Fled ! fled! fled !

False ! dishononed ! worse than deed!

At lad the sun gbea down along the bay, And with him drags detested Day.

Be sleeps; and, dream-like as she fled, beside Hie pillow, Dream indeed, behold ! his Bride Once more in more than bridal beauty stands ; But, ever as he reaches forth his bands,

Slips from them back into the viewless deep, .

On those soft silent wings that walk the ways of sleep."

How fine is this ! We may even say, how truly Aschylean ! Yet the larger portion has no equivalent in the original.

"Perfect English poems, instinct with the true flavour of their prototypes," is the description which the editor gives of the versions from which we have quoted, and of the "Six Dramas of Calderon : Freely Translated," which form the larger part of the second volume ; and it is not too much to say. We have never, indeed, seen translations from which the gene, the stiffness, the effort, which may be traced in even the happiest, the most skilful specimens of the art, are so conspicuously absent. We must be content with one more quotation from Omar Khan:1m

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jag of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Them Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise snow !

Some for the Glories of this World ; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come ; A.b, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the ramble of a distant Dram !

Look to the blowing Rose about us= Lo, Laughing,' she says, 'into the world I blow, At once the silken tassel of my Parse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.'

And those who husbanded the Golden grain, And those who flung it to the winds like Rain, Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd As, buried once, Men want dug up again."

And one more from the Agamemnon (Tpitas 'Axasol lzotoe

ic

imcipie" " In Troy—to-night—to.day—this moment—how Harmoniously, as in one vessel meet Fail and OD, meet Triumph and Despair, Sluiced by the sword along the reeking street, On which the Gods look down from burning air. Slain, slaying—dying, dead—about the dead

Fighting to die themselves—maidens and wives Locke by the looks, with their barbarian young, And torn away to slavery and shame By hands all reeking with their Champion's blood.

Until, with execution weary, we Fling down our slaughter.satiated swords, To gorge oarselves on the unfinisht feasts Of poor old Priam and his sons ; and then, Roll'd on rich couches never spread for no, Ev'n now our sleep-besotted foreheads turn

-Up to the very San that rises here."

The chief prose works included in the volumes are "Enphranor," a dialogue of the Platonic kind, setting forth what we may call the author's philosophy of life, and, apart from its subject, possessing not a little personal interest, the interlocutors being figures, not very deeply disguised, of Fitz- gerald's Cambridge friends ; and " Polonins," a collection, perhaps, as the name would seem to indicate, half-ironically made, of wise saws. We have also a preface to an edition of selections from Crabbe, a poet whom Mr. Fitzgerald admired the more because he also was a Suffolk man (nowhere is county feeling stronger than in East Anglia), and some papers on " Suffolk Sea-Phrases.' It is curious to observe that Mr. Fitz- gerald allowed himself, as an editor, something of the same liberty which he took as a translator. A version of " Salisman and Absfil," a mystical Persian poem of the fifteenth century, completes the contents of these two volumes, volumes which reflect great credit on both editor and publisher.