Description

It is twenty years since I first determined to attemptthetranslation of Faust, in the original metres. At thattime,although more than a score of English translations of theFirstPart, and three or four of the Second Part, were in existence,theexperiment had not yet been made. The prose version ofHaywardseemed to have been accepted as the standard, in defaultofanything more satisfactory: the English critics,generallysustaining the translator in his views concerning thesecondaryimportance of form in Poetry, practically discouraged anyfurtherattempt; and no one, familiar with rhythmical expressionthroughthe needs of his own nature, had devoted the necessary loveandpatience to an adequate reproduction of the great work ofGoethe'slife.