Note 2 — COMTE.

Footnote 2

:

(return)

In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be required of us. Though we might fill many pages with instances of the two great sins of the translator, commission and omission, the poco piu and poco meno, we will content ourselves with taking, ad aperturam libri, an example. At page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian Anthology, will be found a short lyric piece of Dmítrieff, entitled "To Chloe." It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty to a translator. Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of the Russian metres—sins against costume, as, for example, the making a hussar (a Russian hussar) swear by his beard, &c. &c. &c.