earth to tremble, and bringing tears to the eyes of the very demons," we ask, but ask in vain, to be shown any masterpieces that might warrant statements even far less enthusiastic.

It was on a national mind producing a poetry of this complexion that the influence of China was brought to bear. The Japanese were at once led intellectually captive by their more highly gifted neighbours, and even in the poetical domain they first of all endeavoured to make out that their compositions might be distributed into certain Chinese categories, and then, finding this difficult, turned to the composition of actual Chinese verse, an accomplishment which has been cultivated down to the present day with the indifferent success that might have been expected. But to change the native poetry was beyond their power. Its very simplicity saved it. It was open to attack on too few points, and the language and literature which attacked it were, however intrinsically superior, too uncouth, or at least too dissimilar in form, to be capable of even slow assimilation. There are not in the poetical vocabulary of Japan a dozen Chinese words, although the language of business and of common life swarms with them in the degree to which all practical matters have been affected by Chinese influence; neither, until a very late period, can we trace any Chinese or other foreign philosophical ideas in the productions of the Japanese poetical writers.

Thus did the native poetry continue to exist. But its existence gradually became an artificial one. Never wide in scope, and cut off from the living interests. which were all bound up with the Chinese civilisation

that had found in Japan a new home, there at last remained nothing for the bard to say, except indeed to intone an endless round of frivolous repetitions, and to torture verse into acrostics for the amusement of a degenerate court.

IV.

A few words on what may be termed the externals of the subject under consideration may not come amiss. The Japanese name for "poem " is allied to the word "to sing," and it is the opinion of the native literati that in olden days all poems were sung. This, however, is a matter of conjecture. In the texts themselves there is a remarkable absence of reference to the art of music, and certainly none of the ancient secular tunes have been handed down. All that we know is that the various odes were composed from time to time as occasion might suggest, and then written down and preserved as family relics, for which reason the term "Family collection" is still in use to designate a poet's productions. It was from manuscript family collections of this kind that the "Mañyefushifu” and other imperial collections were compiled; for although printing was known in China as early as the time of Alfred the Great, it was scarcely used in Japan before the beginning of the seventeenth century. The poetical tournaments mentioned by European writers for the composition of short odes, on subjects drawn by lot, were not in vogue until the Middle Ages, when real poetry was already defunct, poetastering having taken its place. They therefore call for no mention here.

INTRODUCTION.

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The manner of representing the lyric dramas is peculiar. The stage, which has remained unaltered in every respect since the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the early dramatists Seami and Otoami acted at Kiyauto before the then Shiyauguñ,* Yoshimasa, is a square wooden room open on all sides but one, and Upon supported on pillars, the side of the square being about eighteen English feet. It is surmounted by a quaint roof somewhat resembling those to be seen on the Japanese Buddhist temples, and is connected with the green-room by a gallery some nine feet wide. this gallery part of the action occasionally takes place. Added on to the back of the square stage is space where sits the orchestra, consisting of one fluteplayer, two performers on instruments which, in the absence of a more fitting name, may perhaps be called tambourines, and one beater of the drum, while the chorus, whose number is not fixed, squat on the ground to the right of the spectator. In a line with the chorus. between it and the audience, sits the less important of the two actors † during the greater portion of the piece. The back of the stage, the only side not open to the air, is painted with a pine-tree in accordance with ancient usage, while, equally in conformity to established rules, three small pine-trees are planted

* More commonly called by Europeans the Shogun or Tycoon. At first nothing but military commanders, the Shiyauguñ soon absorbed all real political power, and were practically kings of the country until the

," which is a late piece, written when the poetical Two was the number of the actors during the golden days of the 66 Nakamitsu," drama of the Middle Ages was already passing over into the prose play of modern times, contains several characters. It is the Abbot who would sit in the place indicated in the text.

in the court which divides the gallery from the space occupied by the less distinguished portion of the audience. The covered place for the audience, who all sit on the mats according to the immemorial custom of their countrymen, runs round three sides of the stage, the most honourable seats being those which directly face it. Masks are worn by such of the actors as take the parts of females or of supernatural beings, and the dresses are gorgeous in the extreme. Scenery, however, is allowed no place on the lyric stage, though carried to such perfection at the theatres where are acted the more modern plays. A true sense of the fitness of things seems, on this point, to have kept the actors faithful to the old traditions of their art. For on the few occasions, occurring mostly in the later pieces, where this rule is broken through, and an attempt made at scenic effect, the spectator cannot help feeling that the spell is in a manner broken, so completely ideal a performance being only marred by the adoption of any of the adventitious aids of the melodramatic stage.* The same remark applies to the statuesque immobility of the actors, and to the peculiar intonation of the recitative. When once the ear has become used to its loudness, it is by no means unpleasing, while the measured cadences of the chorus are from the very first both soothing and impressive. The music, unfortunately, cannot claim like praise, and the dancing executed by the chief character towards the

* For a different view of this absence of scenery, see Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan," vol. i. p. 164, where an interesting analysis is given of a set of lyric pieces acted before H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, including the "Robe of Feathers," translated below.

close of each piece is tedious and meaningless to the European spectator. The performance occupies a whole day. For although each piece takes, on an average, but one hour to represent, five or six are given in succession, and the intervals between them. filled up by the acting of comic scenes.

Down to the time of the late revolution, much ceremony and punctilious etiquette hedged in on every side those who were admitted to the honour of viewing these dramatic performances at the Shiyauguñ's court. Now the doors are open to all alike, but it is still chiefly the old aristocracy who make up the audience; and even they, highly trained as they are in the ancient literature, usually bring with them a book of the play, to enable them to follow with the eye the difficult text, which is rendered still harder of comprehension by the varying tones of the choric chant.

V.

Shall translations from foreign poetry be made in prose or in verse? or, to change the form of the question, shall we reproduce the actual words of the original, or make ourselves the interpreters of its intention? Shall we sacrifice the spirit to the letter, or the letter to the spirit?

This question, this perplexity, is as old as the art of translation, and, by its very nature, admits of no authoritative and satisfactory solution; for different minds will inevitably approach it with contrary prepossessions, so that the debate between the literalists