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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: 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
Don Quixote |
