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[Pg xlviii]

It was not till 1830 that the first genuine translation of the Galatea appeared, and this German version was followed by two others in the same language. These stood alone till 1867ssss1 when it occurred to a droll, strange man named Gordon Willoughby James Gyll (or James Willoughby Gordon Gill),ssss1 to publish an English rendering of Cervantes's pastoral in which, as he thought, "the rural characters are nicely defined; modesty and grace with simplicity prevailing." Gyll, who wrongly imagined that he was the first to translate [Pg li][Pg lii] the Galatea, seems to have been specially attracted by Cervantes's verses,—a compliment which the author would have enjoyed all the more on learning from his admirer that these "compositions are cast in lyrics and iambics, without being quite of a dithyrambic character, furnishing relief to the prose, and evincing the skill and tendency of the bard in all effusions relative to love, the master-passion of our existence, without which all would be arid and disappointing to the eagle spirit of the child of song." After this opening you know what to expect. And you get it—three hundred and forty-nine pages of it! Gyll never writes of parts, but of "portions"; rather than leave a place, he will "evacuate" it; nothing will induce him to return if he can "revert"; he prefers "scintillations" to gleams, "perturbators" to disturbers, "cogitation" to thought, and "exculpations" to excuses. Gyll's English, as may be judged from the specimens just quoted, is almost as eccentric as the English of Mohindronauth Mookerjee in his Memoir of the late Honourable Justice Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee, and it is much less amusing. His effrontery is beyond description. He knew nothing of Cervantes whom he actually believed to be a contemporary of Floridablanca in the eighteenth century.ssss1 He almost implies that he has read Cervantes's lost Filena, though he admits that it "is now rarely found." His ignorance of Spanish is illimitable. How he can have presumed to translate from it passes all understanding. He misinterprets the easiest phrases, and he follows the simple plan of translating each word by the first rough equivalent that he finds given in some poor dictionary. It would be waste of time to criticize the inflated prose and detestable verse which combine [Pg liii][Pg liv] to make Gyll's rendering the worst in the world. Two specimens will suffice to show what Gyll can do when he gives his mind to it. At the very opening of the First Book, he reveals his powers:—"But the perspicacity of Galatea detected in the motions of his countenance what Elicio contained in his soul, and she evinced such condescension that the words of the enamoured shepherd congealed in his mouth, though it appeared to him that he had done an injury to her, even to treat of what might not have the semblance of rectitude." This is Gyll as a master of prose. Gyll, the lyric poet, is even richer in artistic surprises. Take, for instance, the closing stanzas of Lauso's song at the beginning of the Fifth Book:—