Doth now stand desolated: the affrighted servants The keys. Oct. (with deep anguish.) O Countess! my house too is deso late. Who is next Coun. Who next is to be murdered? Speak not of maltreatment! The Empress honors your adversity, Her motherly arms! Therefore no farther fears! Yield yourself up in hope and confidence To the Imperial Grace! Coun. (with her eyes raised to heaven.) To the grace and mercy of a greater Master Do I yield up myself. Where shall the body Is now proprietor of all our castles. This sure may well be granted us-one sepulchre Oct. Countess, you tremble, you turn pale! Coun. (re-assembles all her powers, and speaks with energy and dignity.) You think More worthily of me, than to believe I would survive the downfall of my house. Coun. Nay, it is too late. [Exit Countess. In a few moments is my fate accomplished. Gor. O house of death and horrors! [He reads the address, and delivers the letter to Octavio, To the Prince Piccolomini. [Octavio with his whole frame expressive of sudden anguish, raises his eyes to heaven. VOL. VII. The Curtain drops. NOTES TO THE TRANSLATION, REPRINTED FROM THE FIRST EDITION. Page 584, line 20. This age and after-ages speak my name. COULD I have hazarded such a Germanism, as the use of the word after-world for posterity,-"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Nahmen" might have been rendered with more literal fidelity:-Let world and after-world speak out my name, &c. Page 584, line 30. Make thy flesh shudder, and thy whole heart sicken. I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age with a literal translation of this line "werth Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzuregen." [This is omitted in the German as it now stands.-D. C.] Page 639, line 16. I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear that I should not have done amiss had I taken this liberty more frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original with a literal translation: Weh denen die auf dich vertraun, an dich WALLENSTEIN. Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie du's O mich hat Höllenkunst getäuscht. Mir sandte Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore, LITERAL TRANSLATION. Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee lean the secure hut of their fortune, allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation. WALLENSTEIN. As thou describest, even black hypocrite's breast. Thou art portraying thy father's heart. so is it shaped in his entrails, in this O, the art of hell has deceived me! The abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend at my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glut-full at the breasts of my love. I never harbored evil towards him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry heaven, &c. We find a difficulty in believing this to have been written by Schiller. THE following notes are from the pen of the late lamented Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, the editor's sister, who was engaged in an examination of the translation of Wallenstein with a view to this edition, which she did not live to complete : NOTE 1. About a year and a half ago, a writer in "The Westminster Review" undertook to prove that the world had been mistaken all those years |