Critics rarely accord all that
authors claim; the former measure the actual achievement,--the latter
look to the ideal conception; if the one be in a reasonable degree
commensurate with the other, we should be lenient toward the faults of
the performance.
With this charitable substratum for our critical structure, let us test
Mr. Sawyer's new version by contrasting it with his own avowed design
and the claims with which he introduces his completed task. In the
Preface he says,--
"This is not a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations
of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict
[strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims
to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, and with
the utmost precision."
This is a somewhat pretentious claim. A strictly literal rendering of
any language into another is by no means always an easy task; and it is
especially difficult to couple, as the translator in this case asserts
he has done, the utmost clearness, force, and precision in the
expression of the thought, with minute exactness of version.
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