left to others to judge. To form any thing like an accurate opinion, it may be necessary to restate, that during this fourteen months’ residence, he acquired such a knowledge of the German, as enabled him to make that extraordinary translation of the Wallenstein, (which will be presently noticed), reading at the same time several German authors, and storing up for himself the means of becoming familiar with others, on subjects in which the English language was deficient. In addition to what in this short period he effected, I may say that some part of this time was employed in receiving many lessons from professor Tychsen, in the Gothic of Ulphilas, which, says he,
“sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried’s Metrical Paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan.”
Coleridge’s Biographia contains the history and developement of his mind till 1816, when it was published; he called it his Literary Life, but of necessity it is intermixed with his biography, as he must have found it impossible to separate them. He had even half promised himself to write his own biography, but the want of success in his literary labours, and the state of his health, caused him to think seriously that his life was diminishing too fast, to permit him to finish those great works, of which he had long planned the execution. The conception of these works was on such a scale, that even his giant intellect, with his great and continuous powers of application, could not have executed them. But to continue. — On his return to London, his first literary occupation was the translation of the Wallenstein, which he effected in six weeks, in a lodging in Buckingham-street, in the Strand; it was printed and published in 1800.
The MS. was purchased by Longman’s house under the condition that the English Version and Schiller’s Play in German were to be published at the same time. The play, as is well known to all German readers, is in three parts; the first part, the Camp, being considered by Coleridge as not sufficiently interesting to the British public to translate, it was not attempted; the second part, the Piccolomini, was translated with the occasional addition of some lines, in order to make out the thought when it appeared to require it, particularly in the Horological scene of the Watch Tower. In the last part the Death of Wallenstein is equally free, but the liberties taken with this play are those of omission.
German was not at that time cultivated in England, and the few plays which were translated, were but bad specimens of German Literature. The Wallenstein is an historical play, without any of those violent tragic events which the public expect to find in German plays, and this was one cause perhaps of disappointment. — It is a play of high thoughts — ennobling sentiments, and for the reflecting individual with good feelings, one of those plays, by which, even without reference to the story, the head and the heart are both benefited. There is no violent excitement produced, and in quiet thought one can dwell on it with pleasure. Coleridge truly prophesied its fate, for when translating it, he said it would fall dead from the press, and indeed but few of the copies were sold; — his advice to the publishers, whom he had forewarned of this failure, was to reserve the unsold copies, and wait till it might become fashionable. They however parted with it as waste paper, though sixteen years afterwards it was eagerly sought for, and the few remaining copies doubled their price; but now that the German language has become more general, and the merit of this translation been appreciated, it has been reprinted with success.
Since the visit of these remarkable men to Germany, the taste for German literature has each year slowly increased, so as to make it almost appear that they have given the direction to this taste, which in England has caused a free inquiry into the writings of German authors, particularly of their poets and philosophers for the one class; and also into the interesting tales and stories to be found for the many who require such amusement.
The edition of Wallenstein, 1800, contains the following preface, which was afterwards abridged, but is here given as it was originally written; the first criticism on it was wholly made out of this preface, and these lines were quoted by the reviewer, in condemnation of the play and the translation, though it is well known that the critic was ignorant of German. The date of the MS. by Schiller is September 30th, 1799, the English is 1800. Coleridge indeed calls it a translation, but had it been verbatim, it would have required much longer time; take it however as we will, it displays wonderful powers; and as he noticed in a letter to a friend, it was executed in the prime of his life and vigour of his mind. Of the metre of this drama he spoke slightingly, and said according to his taste,
“it dragged, like a fly through a glue-pot. It was my intention,” he writes, “to have prefixed a life of Wallenstein to this translation; but I found that it must either have occupied a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of the publication, or have been merely a meagre catalogue of events narrated, not more fully than they already are in the play itself. The recent translation, likewise, of Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years’ War, diminished the motives thereto. In the translation, I have endeavoured to render my author literally, wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of idiom; but I am conscious, that in two or three short passages, I have been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed myself of no other liberties, than those which Schiller had permitted to himself, except the occasional breaking up of the line, by the substitution of a trochee for an iambus; of which liberty, so frequent in our tragedies, I find no instance in these dramas.
The two Dramas, Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein, and Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in one act, entitled Wallenstein’s camp. This is written in rhyme, and in nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer’s Shepherd’s Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into any other metre than that of the original, would have given a false idea, both of its style and purport; to have translated it into the same metre, would have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to the sense of the German, from the comparative poverty of our language in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of those lax verses with the present state of the English public. Schiller’s intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his reader for the tragedies, by a lively picture of the laxity of discipline, and the mutinous disposition of Wallenstein’s soldiery. It is not necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it has been thought expedient not to translate it.
The admirers of Schiller, who have abstracted their idea of that author from the Robbers, and the Cabal and Love plays, in which the main interest is produced by the excitement of curiosity, and in which the curiosity is excited by terrible and extraordinary incident, will not have perused, without some portion of disappointment, the dramas which it has been my employment to translate. They should, however, reflect, that these are historical dramas, taken from a popular German history; that we must therefore judge of them in some measure with the feelings of Germans, or by analogy with the interest excited in us by similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or ignorant enough, to compare Schiller with Shakspeare, yet, merely as illustration, I would say, that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not from Lear or Othello, but from Richard the Second, or the three parts of Henry the Sixth. We scarcely expect rapidity in an historical drama; and many prolix speeches are pardoned from characters, whose names and actions have formed the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other hand, there exist in these plays more individual beauties, more passages the excellence of which will bear reflection than in the former productions of Schiller.
The description of the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the young lover, which follow it, form in the original a fine poem, and my translation must have been wretched indeed, if it can have wholly overclouded the beauties of the scene in the first act of the first play, between Questenberg, Max. and Octavio Piccolomini.
If we except the scene of the setting sun in the Robbers, I know of no part in Schiller’s plays, which equals the whole
