[J] I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from Jacob Grimm:  “No one of all the modern languages has acquired a greater force and strength than the English, through the derangement and relinquishment of its ancient laws of sound.  The unteachable (nevertheless learnable) profusion of its middle-tones has conferred upon it an intrinsic power of expression, such as no other human tongue ever possessed.  Its entire, thoroughly intellectual and wonderfully successful foundation and perfected development issued from a marvelous union of the two noblest tongues of Europe, the Germanic and the Romanic.  Their mutual relation in the English language is well known, since the former furnished chiefly the material basis, while the latter added the intellectual conceptions.  The English language, by and through which the greatest and most eminent poet of modern times—­as contrasted with ancient classical poetry—­(of course I can refer only to Shakespeare) was begotten and nourished, has a just claim to be called a language of the world; and it appears to be destined, like the English race, to a higher and broader sway in all quarters of the earth.  For in richness, in compact adjustment of parts, and in pure intelligence, none of the living languages can be compared with it,—­not even our German, which is divided even as we are divided, and which must cast off many imperfections before it can boldly enter on its career.”—­Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache.

The difficulties in the way of a nearly literal translation of Faust in the original metres have been exaggerated, because certain affinities between the two languages have not been properly considered.  With all the splendor of versification in the work, it contains but few metres of which the English tongue is not equally capable.  Hood has familiarized us with dactylic (triple) rhymes, and they are remarkably abundant and skillful in Mr. Lowell’s “Fable for the Critics”:  even the unrhymed iambic hexameter of the Helena occurs now and then in Milton’s Samson Agonistes.  It is true that the metrical foot into which the German language most naturally falls is the trochaic, while in English it is the iambic:  it is true that German is rich, involved, and tolerant of new combinations, while English is simple, direct, and rather shy of compounds; but precisely these differences are so modified in the German of Faust that there is a mutual approach of the two languages.  In Faust, the iambic measure predominates; the style is compact; the many licenses which the author allows himself are all directed towards a shorter mode of construction.  On the other hand, English metre compels the use of inversions, admits many verbal liberties prohibited to prose, and so inclines towards various flexible features of its sister-tongue that many lines of Faust may be repeated in English without the slightest change of meaning, measure, or rhyme.  There are words, it is true, with so delicate a bloom upon them that it can in no wise be preserved; but even such words will always lose less when they carry with them their rhythmical atmosphere.  The flow of Goethe’s verse is sometimes so similar to that of the corresponding English metre, that not only its harmonies and caesural pauses, but even its punctuation, may be easily retained.