NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 342, 31 October 1908, Page 12

NOTES.

The late Professor Churton Collins was ail indefatigable worker; and varied as was the nature of his work the_ pleasure of the task, with him, lay always in that direction where use could be made of his aesthetic appreciation of poetry. One of his more recent labours (says the "Westminster Gazette") was the compilation of a "Treasury of Minor British Poetry," which was published in 1906, and compiled, as he says in the preface, in order "to remember tho forgotten and to assist 'buried - merit' to assert or reassert itself"; adding, with a touch of genuino pathos, that "there is no debt more sacred than that saddest of all debts, the expression of gratitude to thoso who are beyond the reach of it." ' Perhaps it may not be inappropriate to quote a stanza from one of these disinterred poems:

Life! we've .been long together, Through pleasant end through cloudy weather ; 'Tis hard to'part when frionds are dear, Perhaps 'twill cost i sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own Mmo, Say not "Good-night," but in soma, brighter clime Bid me "Good morning."

These lines were written by Mrs. Barbauld, and, as Professor Collins remarks, " How Anna Letitia Aikin could have deviated into lines so exquisite as. these must be inexplicable to all who are acquainted with her poetry." ,

Mr. E. T. Cooke's introduction to the new volumes of Ruskin contains a good deal of rather' pathetic matter regarding the great critic's last days. Ruskin usod his pen for the last time in 1897, when he signed his name to an> address which was being presented to his old friend, the painter Watts, on his eightieth birthday; About this time it was that Ruskin held his finger and ■thumb and remarked to a friend that they would never again hold a pen. He added with a smile-.—"But, after all, they have .brought me into so much trouble that perhaps it is as well that they should .rest."

The editor of "The Point of View" ""in "Scribner's Magazine" discourses interestingly of a striking name as the most precious possession of a writer. The point is a good one, thinks the New York ''Times," which says: —"It is now impossible to dissociate the name of a classical author from tho fame which has accrued to it through the work of its possessor. Yet one may. conjecture that the name of John Milton, when it was first heard, carried an implication of dignity and power. 'Alfred Tennyson' has a fitting sweetness and grace which 'Alfred Austin' entirely lacks. 'William Wordsworth' seems to describe to the imagination precisely such a poet as the author of 'Tho Excursion.'

"Were William Shakespeare to send his card to a publishing house to-day editor might be conscious of a certain comic cast in the cognomen. John Keats can scarcely bo said to bare possessed an impressive name; and Percy Byssho Shelley certainly laboured under a nominal handicap. 'Gilbert Chesterton' would seem to be as full and resonant as 'Thomas Chatterton,' yet it is difficult to imagine the possessor of these two names exchanging. 'Poe' is' a .poor name, and 'Edgar Allan' does not improvo it; it is almost no wonder that Emerson called its owner 'tho jingle man.' Poe, by the way, invented fow good names."

It is said that when the Bible was translated into Japanese an equivalent to the word "baptise" was not to be found, and the word "soak" had to bo used instead, so that the Japanese are acquainted with a person of the name of "John tho Soaker" and_ with a doctrine of "soaking for the remission of sins." In that caso the mistranslation was due to inadequacy of language. It is oftener duo to ignorance. Thus one sees what the schoolboy was after who rendered "Miserere, Dominel" "0 heartbroken schoolmaster!" and .who, struggling with an exercise, recovered from the German the familiar text "The spirit, indeed, is willing, but tho flesh is weak" in the form "The ghost, of course, is ready, but the meat is feeble." A mistranslation, it seems, has had somothing to do with the strained relations existing between Holland and Venezuela. The Dutch Consul, referring to a trivial but disagreeable incident, wrote to bis Venezuelan colleague that "een booze droom," an evil dream, was threatening to disturb the peace. This the translator rendered in Spanish "maladetto spirito," a cursed bad spirit, and when tho document in this form was shown to President Castro his wig was on the green at once. It is not tho first time that tho Dutch have had experience of misrenderings in their, dealings with other nations. When England onco was trying to force a rupture .•on Holland, the Ministry complained of a portrait of Cornelius de Witt, in tho background of which British ships wore represented as on firo or badly mauled by Dutch shot. This portrait they vaguely described as "abusivo pictures," and tho translator rendered tho phrase in French, the diplomatio language, "tableaux trompeurs." After much scratching of heads, the Dutch replied that tlioy knew of no such pictures. Voltairo tolls the story in his "Histoiro de Louis XIV."— "Manchester Guardian."