Line 2507, 'my unfriendly hug finished his bony frame.' " 2583, 'The Geat's free-handed friend crowed not in pride of victory.' " 2655, 'Fell the foe and shield the Weder-Geat Lord's life.' " 2688, 'the public scourge, the dreadful salamander.' " 2834, 'show his form' (said of the Dragon). " 2885, 'hopelessly escheated from your breed.'
It is also rather surprising to learn from Dr. Hall that Beowulf was one of those that 'advanced home government' (l. 3005).
It should be added that the explanatory comment which constantly interrupts the translation, often six or eight times in a section, is annoying, both because it distracts the attention and because it is often presented in a style wholly inappropriate to the context.
But this absence of ease and dignity does not hinder Dr. Hall's translation from being an excellent rendering of the matter of the poem, at once less fanciful than Earle's[5] and more modern than Garnett's[6], its only rivals as a literal translation. That it conveys an adequate notion of the style of _Beowulf_, however, it is impossible to affirm.
[Footnote 1: Chiefly of Anglo-Saxon antiquities.]
[Footnote 2: See supra, p. 91.] [[Earle]]
[Footnote 3: See my forthcoming review of the book in the _Journal of Germanic Philology_.]
[Footnote 4: See supra, p. 91.] [[Earle]]
[Footnote 5: See supra, p. 91.] [[Earle]]
[Footnote 6: See supra, p. 83.] [[Garnett]]
Beowulf, translated out of the Old English by Chauncey Brewster Tinker, M.A. New York: Newson and Co., 1902. 12mo, pp. 158.
_Aim of the Volume and Nature of the Translation._
'The present translation of _Beowulf_ is an attempt to make as simple and readable a version of the poem as is consistent with the character of the original. Archaic forms, which have been much in favor with translators of Old English, have been excluded, because it has been thought that vigor and variety are not incompatible with simple, idiomatic English....
The principal ways in which the present version differs from a merely literal translation are the following: (1) in a rather broad interpretation of pregnant words and phrases; (2) in a conception of some of the Old English compounds as conventional phrases in which the original metaphorical sense is dead; (3) in a free treatment of connecting words; (4) in frequent substitution of a proper name for an ambiguous pronoun.