From: The Dial, Vol. II, No. I (July 1841).
Author:
Published: E. P. Peabody 1841 Boston
We have never acknowledged the receipt from Mr. Bixby of Lowell, of copies from his editions of Hayward’s Faust, and Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child. It is ungrateful not to express the pleasure we felt in such works being made accessible to innumerable inquirers who were ever pursuing the fortunate owners of the English copies. All translations of Faust can give no better idea of that wonderful work than a Silhouette of one of Titian’s beauties; but we much prefer the prose translation to any of the numerous metrical attempts which are an always growing monument to the power of the work, which kindles its admirers to attempt the impossible. We cannot but wonder that any one who aims at all at literary culture can remain ignorant of German, the acquisition of which language is not a year’s labor with proper instruction, and would give them access to such wide domains of thought and knowledge. But if they will remain, from indolence, beggars, this translation will give them the thought, if not the beauty, of Goethe’s work.
The Correspondence is as popular here as in Germany, but we intend in the next number of the Dial to give a brief notice of Bettina Brentano, and the correspondence with Günderode, which she is now publishing in Germany. It is to be hoped she will translate that also into the same German English of irresistible naiveté, of which she has already given us a specimen.
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