Reynard the Fox, After the German Version of Goethe
By , Esq. With Illustrations from the Designs of Wilhelm von Kaulbach. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 346 and 348 Broadway. 1860. pp. 226.
IT is very well that Mr. Arnold should tell us on the title-page that his version is after that of Goethe. Nothing could be truer,—and it is a very long way after, too. By substituting the slow and verbose pentameter of what is called the classic school of English poetry for the remarkably forth- right and simple eight-syllable measure of the original, the translator has contrived to lose almost wholly that homely flavor of the old poet, which Goethe carefully preserved. We do not mean to say that this is altogether a bad version, as such things go ; on the contrary, it has a great deal of spirit, as it could hardly fail to have, unless it belied its model altogether ;—but it is as far as possible from giving any notion of the characteristic qualities of “ Reinaert de Vos.” If Mr. Arnold must change the measure, Chaucer’s "Nonnes Preestes Tale ” would have been a safer guide to follow.
The book, in spite of its American titlepage, is wholly of English manufacture. It is a very handsome volume, and Kaulbach’s illustrations are copied with tolerable success, though with inevitable inferiority to the German originals. Kaulbach is hardly so happy an animal-painter as Grandville, but he has at least given his subjects in this case a more human expression than in his monstrous caricatures of Shakspeare.