together there appears to be no likeness between them, and the different positions which they take up in the alphabet cause the bibliographer an infinity of trouble.  Thus the original of Xerxes is Khshayarsha (the revered king), and Averrhoes is Ibn Roshd (son of Roshd).  The latter’s full name is Abul Walid Mohammed ben Ahmed ben Mohammed.  Artaxerxes is in old Persian Artakhshatra, or the Fire Protector, and Darius means the Possessor.  Although all these names—­Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Darius—­have a royal significance, they were personal names, and not titles like Pharaoh.

It is often difficult to believe that translators can have taken the trouble to read their own work, or they surely would not let pass some of the blunders we meet with.  In a translation of Lamartine’s Girondins some courtly people are described as figuring ``under the vaults’’ of the Tuileries instead of beneath the arched galleries (sous ses voutes).  This, however, is nothing to a blunder to be found in the Secret Memoirs of the Court of p 55Louis XIV. and of the Regency_ (1824).  The following passage from the original work, ``Deux en sont morts et on dit publiquement qu’ils ont e’te’ empoisonne’s,’’ is rendered in the English translation to the confusion of common sense as ``Two of them died with her, and said publicly that they had been poisoned.’’

This is not unlike the bull of the young soldier who, writing home in praise of the Indian climate, said, ``But a lot of young fellows come out here, and they drink and they eat, and they eat and they drink, and they die; and then they write home to their friends saying it was the climate that did it.’’

Some authors have found that there is peril in too free a translation, thus Dotet was condemned on Feb. 14th, 1543, for translating a passage in Plato’s Dialogues as ``After death you will be nothing at all.’’ Surely he who translated Dieu dfend l’adultre as God defends adultery more justly deserved punishment!  Guthrie, the geographical writer, who translated a French book of travels, unfortunately mistook neuvime (ninth) for neuvelle or p 56_neuve_, and therefore made an allusion to the twenty-sixth day of the new moon.

Moore quotes in his Diary (Dec. 30th, 1818) a most amusing blunder of a translator who knew nothing of the technical name for a breakwater.  He translated the line in Goldsmith’s Deserted Village,

 ``As ocean sweeps the labour’d mole away,

into

 ``Comme la mer de’truit les travaux de la taupe.’’

D’Israeli records two comical translations from English into French. ``Ainsi douleur, va-t’en ``for woe begone is almost too good; and the man who mistook the expression ``the officer was broke’’ as meaning broke on a wheel and translated it by rou made a very serious matter of what was possibly but a small fault.