Targum

Excerpt

The following pieces, selections from a huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits, are with much diffidence offered to the public, the writer being fully aware that not unfrequently he has failed in giving his version that cast and turn, which constitute no slight part of the beauty of the original; a point the accomplishment of which the poetical Translator ought, in all instances, to bear particularly in view, but which he will invariably find the most difficult part of the task which he has undertaken; in comparison with which the rendering of the diction of his Author into tolerable verse is an easy achievement.  Perhaps no person, amongst the many individuals who have distinguished themselves by skill in the targumannic art, has more successfully surmounted this difficulty than Fairfax, the Translator into English “octave rhyme” of “The Jerusalem,” the master-piece of the greatest poet of modern Italy and, with one exception, of modern time.