The charge against it is that it is stiff, dry--"wooden" in a word,-and
no one can deny that there is a foundation for it. But it may be pleaded
for Jervas that a good deal of this rigidity is due to his abhorrence of
the light, flippant, jocose style of his predecessors. He was one of the
few, very few, translators that have shown any apprehension of the
unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; it seemed to
him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking and grinning at his own
good things, and to this may be attributed in a great measure the ascetic
abstinence from everything savouring of liveliness which is the
characteristic of his translation. In most modern editions, it should be
observed, his style has been smoothed and smartened, but without any
reference to the original Spanish, so that if he has been made to read
more agreeably he has also been robbed of his chief merit of fidelity.
Smollett's version, published in 1755, may be almost counted as one of
these. At any rate it is plain that in its construction Jervas's
translation was very freely drawn upon, and very little or probably no
heed given to the original Spanish.
The later translations may be dismissed in a few words. George Kelly's,
which appeared in 1769, "printed for the Translator," was an impudent
imposture, being nothing more than Motteux's version with a few of the
words, here and there, artfully transposed; Charles Wilmot's (1774) was
only an abridgment like Florian's, but not so skilfully executed; and the
version published by Miss Smirke in 1818, to accompany her brother's
plates, was merely a patchwork production made out of former
translations. On the latest, Mr. A. J. Duffield's, it would be in every
sense of the word impertinent in me to offer an opinion here. I had not
even seen it when the present undertaking was proposed to me, and since
then I may say vidi tantum, having for obvious reasons resisted the
temptation which Mr. Duffield's reputation and comely volumes hold out to
every lover of Cervantes.
From the foregoing history of our translations of "Don Quixote," it will
be seen that there are a good many people who, provided they get the mere
narrative with its full complement of facts, incidents, and adventures
served up to them in a form that amuses them, care very little whether
that form is the one in which Cervantes originally shaped his ideas. On
the other hand, it is clear that there are many who desire to have not
merely the story he tells, but the story as he tells it, so far at least
as differences of idiom and circumstances permit, and who will give a
preference to the conscientious translator, even though he may have
acquitted himself somewhat awkwardly.