seat. ancient domestics upon1 my friend's arrival at his countrySome of them could not refrain from tears 2 at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him,3 and seemed discouraged 4 if they were not employed.5 At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with 6 several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good-nature 7 engages everybody to him; so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with:10 on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays 11 any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.12 13 9 8 My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me,14 because they have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend.—(ADDISON, Spectator.) 1 d. 2 Quelques-uns d'entre eux ne pouvaient retenir leurs larmes. 3 s'empressait autour de lui afin de se rendre utile (or, de s'utiliser). 4 mortifié. 5 lorsque, par moments, il ne se trouvait rien à faire. 6 leur adressait, tout en s'enquérant de ses propres affaires. 7 These two nouns, being nearly synonymous, had better follow each other without a conjunction, but with the pronoun repeated.-'goodnature; see page 139, note 12. 8 captive (or, lui gagne-lui concilie) tous les cours. Whenever two substantives, being nearly synonymous, thus follow one another im mediately, the verb, and also the adjective or participle, must be in the singular. 9 quand il plaisante (or, badine) l'un ou l'autre de ses gens, il les met tous de. 10 mais principalement celui sur le compte duquel (or, de qui-but not dont; see page 134, note 13) il se divertit. See page 1, note 12. 11 ou s'il laisse voir. 12 il est facile à qui se trouve présent de deviner à leur air qu'ils lui portent tous un vif intérêt. 13 m'a confié tout particulièrement à la garde (or, aux soins). 14 et qui est aux petits soins avec moi, comme le sont d'ailleurs les autres domestiques. A COWPER TO MR. J. NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, 3 6 I FOLLOWING your good example, I lay before me a sheet of my largest paper. It was this moment fair and unblemished,1 but I have begun to blot 2 it, and having begun, am not likely to cease till 4 I have spoiled it.5 have sent you many a sheet that in my judgment of it has been very unworthy of your acceptance, but my conscience was in some measure 7 satisfied by reflecting, that if it were good for 9 nothing, at the same time 10 it cost you nothing, except the trouble of reading it. But the case is altered now. 11 You must pay a solid price for frothy matter; 12 and though I do not absolutely pick your pocket, 13 yet you lose your money, and, as the saying is, are never the wiser. 14 My green-house is never so pleasant as when we are just on the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it 15 a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it 16 in the summer; when 17 the winds being 12 il vous faut payer en espèces de la viande creuse." 1 Elle était tout à l'heure (or, il n'y a qu'un instant) pure de toute tache et de toute souillure. 2 barbouiller, or noircir. 3 il n'est pas probable que je, with the subjunctive. avant; and see page 7, note 7. 5 See page 32, note 12. 6 that,' &c., bien indigne, à mon avis, d'être acceptée (page 28, note 4) de vous. 7 jusqu'à un certain point; or, en quelque manière (or, sorte-or, degré). 8 Turn, 'by the reflection.' 9 d. 10 d'autre part; or, elle ne... non plus. 11 Mais à l'heure qu'il est, les choses sont changées (or, le cas n'est plus le même). Put a colon here. 13pick your pocket; use vous voler.-'absolutely; dans toute la force du terme. ... 14 votre argent ne laisse pas d'être (or, ne laisse pas que d'être) déboursé, et vous n'en êtes pas (or, sans que vous en soyez) plus avancé. This expression, ne pas laisser de (or, que de), followed by an infinitive, denotes a fact accomplished notwithstanding what has been stated previously. 15 Les douces chaleurs et le calme de l'automne en font. 16 much more,' bien plus, or bien autrement; see p. 30, n. 11: the rule referred to applies to autre and autrement, as well as to plus and moins. 17 See page 18, note 13. 4 8 generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting 2 a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it.3 But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am 5 regaled with 6 the scent of every flower, in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees; but if I lived in a hive, I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the 10 neighbourhood resort to a bed 11 of mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it,12 by 13 a hum which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that Nature utters 16 are delightful, at least 17 in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; 18 but I know no beast 19 in England whose voice I do not account musical,20 save and 14 1 'brisk,' assez forts. 2 en laissant entrer. 3 Turn, from it (en).' 4 je reste les fenêtres et la porte toutes grandes ouvertes. Although tout, before an adjective or a participle, when it is an adverb (used for tout à fait, quite'), is in its nature an invariable word, yet it agrees, for the sake of euphonyin the feminine singular and plural, but never in the masculine plural, -if the adjective or the participle, being feminine, begins with a consonant or an aspirate h. 5 et je suis. Notice the repetition of the pronoun, here also, besides the cases we have seen above, p. 31, n. 1, and p. 32, n. 1. The present instance is similar to that at p. 23, n. 6. 6 de. 7 le rendre; and see p. 224, n. 13. 8to keep,' here, avoir. 9 Use habiter (active), and see p. 61, n. 12, and p. 142, n. 14. 10 du. 11 un carré, or une planche. 12 'for' is not to be translated. In French, the reverse of the English takes place here: it is the thing bought which is the direct 15 regimen, and the person paid is 14 un peu; or, assez. 15 m'est aussi agréable à entendre; or, simply, m'est aussi agréable, as the word entendre inevitably occurs just below. 16 fait entendre. 17. See page 126, note 13. 18 Je ne trouverais peut-être pas très gai... &c. 19 je ne sache point de quadrupède. Je ne sache is frequently used with pas, point, rien, aucun, personne, for je ne sais, or, je ne connais, pas, &c. This Gallicism is only used in the first person, singular and plural: thus we say, likewise, nous ne sachons, &c., for &c. &c. Yet it is only employed in the sense of 'I am not aware;' for we could not say, e. g., je ne sache (it should be sais) pas ma leçon. 20 dont je ne tienne la voix mélodieuse (or, pour mélodieuse). Notice here, first, the use of the subjunctive (tienne) after a verb conjugated with a negative and followed except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls 1 please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think 2 of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of1 his melody; but a goose upon a common,5 or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to 10 the bass of the humble-bee, I admire them all. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that 11 such an exact accord has been contrived 12 between his ear and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. 13 All the world is sensible of 14 the uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits;15 and if a sinful world 16 had been filled with such as would have curdled 17 the blood, and have made the 18 sense of hearing by a relative pronoun (je ne sache point...dont); secondly, the suppression of pas or point (though ne shows the sentence to be negative) in this latter part of the proposition, for the sake of elegance, as point is already expressed in the former (see, for a similar example, p. 25, n. 11); and, thirdly, the position of the thing possessed (voix) after the verb, because it is here the object of the verb, whereas if it were the subject of the verb, it would precede it in that case in French, as it does in either case in English. 1 and fowls;' y compris ceux de basse-cour. 2 to think,' here, s'aviser. 4 5 dans la campagne. est parfaitement en situation. 7as to,' quant aux (p. 2, n. 15). si l'escarbot et, de fait, tout le reste des scarabées, veulent bien éviter de se trouver sur mon chemin (or, sur mon passage), aucun des autres ne me répugne. 9 dans quelque clé qu'ils; with the subjunctive. 10 from,' depuis; 'treble,' dessus (masculine); 'to,' jusqu'à. 11 je crois découvrir (p. 7, n. 7) un exemple très remarquable de la bonté de la Providence envers l'homme, dans ce fait, que. Whenever 'to' expresses certain relations of behaviour, &c., and has the sense of 'towards,' translate it by envers. 12 un accord aussi parfait a été ménagé. We must here keep to the passive, as in English, instead of using on with the active voice, and this for a very obvious reason. See page 8, note 15. 13 with which,' dont; 'to visit,' here, frapper. See p. 3, n. 18. 14 Personne au monde n'ignore. 15 sur le moral. 16 ce monde de pécheurs. 17 de sons à cailler (or, better, d faire tourner à tourner à glacer). 18 et à faire du a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that1 we should have a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, the gardens, have each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever 2 regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author.4 There is, somewhere in infinite space, a world, that does not roll within the precincts of mercy; and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural,5 to suppose that there is music in heaven,6 in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found;7 tones so dismal, as to make 8 woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate even9 despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw 10 the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.11 THE COMPARISON OF WATCHES. WHEN Griselda thought 12 that her husband had long enough 13 enjoyed his new existence, and that there was danger of his forgetting 14 the taste of sorrow, she changed 1 je ne sais si, with the conditional; or, je ne sache pas que, with the imperfect subjunctive.-Notice here, that it is more elegant, when conjugating savoir negatively, to omit pas or point, and only use ne; except in the case of emphasis, when we should say, for instance, je ne sais pas, instead of je ne sais, as above. See besides p. 48, n. 12. 2 sans cesse; or, constamment. uniquement se donner à ellesmêmes du plaisir. 3 4 à son auteur. This use of the possessive son is another deviation (see p. 30, n. 19) from the custom mentioned at p. 18, n. 6; the reason of it here is, that the object possessed (auteur) is what the French call the complément of a preposition (the prep. d).-' though without knowing it; see page 3, note 18. 5 conforme à l'Ecriture sainte (or, simply, à l'Ecriture). 6 que la musique fait partie des joies du Paradis. 7 Leave out of it.'-'is found:' see p. 8, n. 15, and p. 32, n. 9. 8 so,' &c., lugubres au point de rendre. 9 et d'aiguiser jusqu'au. 10 à propos (or, à temps) de serrer. 11 dans des abimes qui ne lui sont que (p. 6, n. 6) trop familiers. 12 See page 1, note ". 13 assez longtemps. 14 il était à craindre qu'il n'oublidt. See p. 21, n. 1, and p. 22, n. 9; and notice this use of ne and the subjunctive with craindre: this verb, however, rejects ne when conjugated negatively. |