Don Quixote | Page 4

(1700), can scarcely be reckoned a
translation, but it serves to show the light in which "Don Quixote" was
regarded at the time.
A further illustration may be found in the version published in 1712 by
Peter Motteux, who had then recently combined tea-dealing with
literature. It is described as "translated from the original by several
hands," but if so all Spanish flavour has entirely evaporated under the
manipulation of the several hands. The flavour that it has, on the other
hand, is distinctly Franco-cockney. Anyone who compares it carefully
with the original will have little doubt that it is a concoction from
Shelton and the French of Filleau de Saint Martin, eked out by
borrowings from Phillips, whose mode of treatment it adopts. It is, to
be sure, more decent and decorous, but it treats "Don Quixote" in the
same fashion as a comic book that cannot be made too comic.
To attempt to improve the humour of "Don Quixote" by an infusion of
cockney flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux's operators did, is not
merely an impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but an
absolute falsification of the spirit of the book, and it is a proof of the
uncritical way in which "Don Quixote" is generally read that this worse
than worthless translation -worthless as failing to represent, worse than

worthless as misrepresenting- should have been favoured as it has been.
It had the effect, however, of bringing out a translation undertaken and
executed in a very different spirit, that of Charles Jervas, the portrait
painter, and friend of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. Jervas has been
allowed little credit for his work, indeed it may be said none, for it is
known to the world in general as Jarvis's. It was not published until
after his death, and the printers gave the name according to the current
pronunciation of the day. It has been the most freely used and the most
freely abused of all the translations. It has seen far more editions than
any other, it is admitted on all hands to be by far the most faithful, and
yet nobody seems to have a good word to say for it or for its author.
Jervas no doubt prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where
among many true words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he
rashly and unjustly charges Shelton with having translated not from the
Spanish, but from the Italian version of Franciosini, which did not
appear until ten years after Shelton's first volume. A suspicion of
incompetence, too, seems to have attached to him because he was by
profession a painter and a mediocre one (though he has given us the
best portrait we have of Swift), and this may have been strengthened by
Pope's remark that he "translated 'Don Quixote' without understanding
Spanish." He has been also charged with borrowing from Shelton,
whom he disparaged. It is true that in a few difficult or obscure
passages he has followed Shelton, and gone astray with him; but for
one case of this sort, there are fifty where he is right and Shelton wrong.
As for Pope's dictum, anyone who examines Jervas's version carefully,
side by side with the original, will see that he was a sound Spanish
scholar, incomparably a better one than Shelton, except perhaps in
mere colloquial Spanish. He was, in fact, an honest, faithful, and
painstaking translator, and he has left a version which, whatever its
shortcomings may be, is singularly free from errors and
mistranslations.
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