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REVIEWS 209 philosophy must prepare the way for and be consummated in religion. And for Coleridge that religion had to consist in the orthodox tenets of a personal God, and of the reality of free will, sin, grace, and the immortality of the soul. But a philosophy which begins (as Coleridge 's does in the Biographia Literaria) by positing as its first principle the endlessly generative opposition and reconciliation of opposites , yet must end with the specific dogmas of the Anglican apologistg, exceeded the capacities of Coleridge's dialectic. This inherent difficulty is not the sole reason, but it is one of the principal reasons, why so much of Coleridge's formaJ philosophy was a matter of false starts, desperate borrowings, and contrived corridors leading to dead ends, and why his all-inclusive Logosophia, so often announced, could never be completed. In the history of English thought, Coleridge the philosopher is an important figure. Among other thlngs, he introduced into England the hwnane and tolerant and, on the whole, more rational aspect of the German philosophical renaissance, as Carlyle later introduced its other aspect of instinctualism, intolerance, and hero-worship. But Coleridge's own philosophy, although it often startles us with its insights and incorporates superlative single passages, cannot, in its total structure, be ranked with the great metaphysical systems it tries to emulate. Coleridge's genuine greatness lies in the theory and practice of literary criticism-though it must at once be added that this criticism owes its power to the fact that it is solidly grounded in the very philosophical principles which Coleridge could never manage, as philosophy, to fashion into a coherent whole. CERVANTES I!'J ENGLISH* M. A. BUCHANAN The late Samuel Putnam was an r.xperienced translator, having to his credit, besides the present work and three of Cervantes' Exemplary Novels, English versions of French and Portuguese. novels. A studious man, to judge by title-page, introduction, and annotations, he addressed himself to serious people who do not mind interrupting their reading of the exploits of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza's drolleries to consult notes and variants (not always translated)_ Gentle readers, young and old, who first savoured the work, enjoyed its humour more spontaneously. In an ambiguous sub-title, Putnam ~The Ingenious GentlBman Don Quixote de La Mancha. Complete in Two Puu. By MrcuEL DE CERVANTes SAAVEDRA. A New Translation froro the Spanish, with a Critical Text Based upo11 the First Editions of 1605 and 1615, and with Variant Readings, Variorum Note~, and an Introduction by SAMUEL PuTNAM. New York: Thr. Viking Press [Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited]. 1949. Pp. xxx, vi, 1043. $12.50 210 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY offers a critical text, but the author's seemingly artless writing, his errors and inconsistencies, and the fact that he did not correct the proofs, preclude success in such an endeavour. The question arises, of course, whether a translation should be more correct than the original. In this and other respects, translations are hard to assess. At best they are makeshifts that reproduce only the grosser parts of a work. As they cannot recreate the tone, subtle turns of phrase and allusionthe bond between author and reader-they seem dull and lifeless, being, as Cervantes said, like the under side of a tapestry. In his introduction , Putnam discusses previous English versions, by way of justifying a new one. The most generally read, because available in cheap reprints, are those of Motteux and Jarvjs of the eighteenth century. Those of Onnsby, Smith (and Putnam) are more scholarly, but are published on large paper, with wide margins, and at a high price. By a strange tum of fortune, Motteu.x, although abused by scholars, and even called "odious," made a good start with the text by being the only one to render correctly the opening lines: "In a village of La Mancha, of wllich I cannot remember the name." Simpler, and retaining more of the ballad of the original, would be: "In a village of La Mancha, whose name I don't recall." It is a traditional Spanish way of beginning a narrative, with no reference to the imprisonment of Cervantes...

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