We may mention together two volumes of translated verse,— Dramatic
Works of Victor Hugo, translated by Frederick L. Slous and Mrs. Newton Crossland (Bell and Sons), and Russian Lyrics in English Verse, by the Rev. C. T. Wilson, M.A. (Trubner and Co.) Both are interesting from their subject, and both, we think, are wanting in form. This defect is a more serious drawback for the second than the first. The intense dramatic interest of Victor Hugo's dramas carries the reader on without giving him much time to criticise the language. The translators, too, though they have no great command of verse, have a power of easy and idiomatic expression. The occasional verse, on the other hand, which Mr. Wilson brings before us, can hardly be appreciated without some more finish than the translator has been able to give to his efforts. Yet here, too, the subject interests. Twenty- five Russian poets are represented here by specimens. Pushkin and Tolstoi are the only names among them which will be well known to the general reader. But much of their work has a strong flavour of the soil, and this makes itself felt in spite of all disadvantages. The public should be obliged to Mr. Wilson for his volume ; one can only wish that his rare accomplishment of the knowledge of the Russian language had been supplemented by a little more facility of versification.
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