As an exciting pastime, unseen translation must rank very high. Everyone who has ever tried translating unseen must acknowledge that all other forms of excitement seem but feeble makeshifts after it. I have, in the course of a career of sustained usefulness to the human race, had my share of thrills. I have asked a strong and busy porter, at Paddington, when the Brighton train started. I have gone for the broad-jump record in trying to avoid a motor-car. I have played Spillikins and Ping-Pong. But never again have I felt the excitement that used to wander athwart my moral backbone when I was put on to translate a passage containing a notorious crux and seventeen doubtful readings, with only that innate genius, which is the wonder of the civilized world, to pull me through. And what a glow of pride one feels when it is all over; when one has made a glorious, golden guess at the crux, and trampled the doubtful readings under foot with inspired ease. It is like a day at the seaside.
Work is bad enough, but Examinations are worse, especially the Board Examinations. By doing from ten to twenty minutes prep every night, the compleat slacker could get through most of the term with average success. Then came the Examinations. The dabbler in unseen translations found himself caught as in a snare. Gone was the peaceful security in which he had lulled to rest all the well-meant efforts of his guardian angel to rouse him to a sense of his duties. There, right in front of him, yawned the abyss of Retribution.
Alas! poor slacker. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Where be his gibes now? How is he to cope with the fiendish ingenuity of the examiners? How is he to master the contents of a book of Thucydides in a couple of days? It is a fearsome problem. Perhaps he will get up in the small hours and work by candle light from two till eight o’clock. In this case he will start his day a mental and physical wreck. Perhaps he will try to work and be led away by the love of light reading.
In any case he will fail to obtain enough marks to satisfy the examiners, though whether examiners ever are satisfied, except by Harry the hero of the school story (Every Lad’s Library, uniform edition, 2s 6d), is rather a doubtful question.
In such straits, matters resolve themselves into a sort of drama with three characters. We will call our hero Smith.
Scene: a Study
Dramatis Personae: SMITH CONSCIENCE MEPHISTOPHELES
Enter SMITH (_down centre_)
He seats himself at table and opens a Thucydides.
Enter CONSCIENCE through ceiling (R.), MEPHISTOPHELES through floor (L.).
CONSCIENCE (_with a kindly smile_): Precisely what I was about to remark, my dear lad. A little Thucydides would be a very good thing. Thucydides, as you doubtless know, was a very famous Athenian historian. Date?
SMITH: Er—um—let me see.
MEPH. (_aside_): Look in the Introduction and pretend you did it by accident.
SMITH (_having done so_): 431 B.C. circ.
CONSCIENCE wipes away a tear.
CONSCIENCE: Thucydides made himself a thorough master of the concisest of styles.
MEPH.: And in doing so became infernally obscure. Excuse shop.
SMITH (_gloomily_): Hum!
MEPH. (_sneeringly_): Ha!
Long pause.
CONSCIENCE (_gently_): Do you not think, my dear lad, that you had better begin? Time and tide, as you are aware, wait for no man. And—
SMITH: Yes?
CONSCIENCE: You have not, I fear, a very firm grasp of the subject. However, if you work hard till eleven—
SMITH (_gloomily_): Hum! Three hours!
MEPH. (_cheerily_): Exactly so. Three hours. A little more if anything. By the way, excuse me asking, but have you prepared the subject thoroughly during the term?
SMITH: My dear sir! Of course!
CONSCIENCE (_reprovingly_):???!!??!
SMITH: Well, perhaps, not quite so much as I might have done. Such a lot of things to do this term. Cricket, for instance.
MEPH.: Rather. Talking of cricket, you seemed to be shaping rather well last Saturday. I had just run up on business, and someone told me you made eighty not out. Get your century all right?
SMITH (_brightening at the recollection_): Just a bit—117 not out. I hit—but perhaps you’ve heard?
MEPH.: Not at all, not at all. Let’s hear all about it.
CONSCIENCE seeks to interpose, but is prevented by MEPH., who eggs SMITH on to talk cricket for over an hour.
CONSCIENCE (at last; in an acid voice): That is a history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides on the table in front of you. I thought I would mention it, in case you had forgotten.
SMITH: Great Scott, yes! Here, I say, I must start.
CONSCIENCE: Hear! Hear!
MEPH. (insinuatingly): One moment. Did you say you had prepared this book during the term? Afraid I’m a little hard of hearing. Eh, what?
SMITH: Well—er—no, I have not. Have you ever played billiards with a walking-stick and five balls?
MEPH.: Quite so, quite so. I quite understand. Don’t you distress yourself, old chap. You obviously can’t get through a whole book of Thucydides in under two hours, can you?
CONSCIENCE (severely): He might, by attentive application to study, master a considerable portion of the historian’s chef d’oeuvre in that time.
MEPH.: Yes, and find that not one of the passages he had prepared was set in the paper.
CONSCIENCE: At the least, he would, if he were to pursue the course which I have indicated, greatly benefit his mind.
MEPH. gives a short, derisive laugh. Long pause.
MEPH. (looking towards bookshelf): Hullo, you’ve got a decent lot of books, pommy word you have. Rodney Stone, Vice Versa, Many Cargoes. Ripping. Ever read Many Cargoes?
CONSCIENCE (glancing at his watch): I am sorry, but I must really go now. I will see you some other day.
Exit sorrowfully.
MEPH.: Well, thank goodness he’s gone. Never saw such a fearful old bore in my life. Can’t think why you let him hang on to you so. We may as well make a night of it now, eh? No use your trying to work at this time of night.
SMITH: Not a bit.
MEPH.: Did you say you’d not read Many Cargoes?
SMITH: Never. Only got it today. Good?
MEPH.: Simply ripping. All short stories. Make you yell.
SMITH (with a last effort): But don’t you think—
MEPH.: Oh no. Besides, you can easily get up early tomorrow for the Thucydides.
SMITH: Of course I can. Never thought of that. Heave us Many Cargoes. Thanks.
Begins to read. MEPH. grins fiendishly, and vanishes through floor enveloped in red flame. Sobbing heard from the direction of the ceiling.
Scene closes.
Next morning, of course, he will oversleep himself, and his Thucydides paper will be of such a calibre that that eminent historian will writhe in his grave.
[14]
NOTES
Of all forms of lettered effusiveness, that which exploits the original work of others and professes to supply us with right opinions thereanent is the least wanted.
Kenneth Grahame
It has always seemed to me one of the worst flaws in our mistaken social system, that absolutely no distinction is made between the master who forces the human boy to take down notes from dictation and the rest of mankind. I mean that, if in a moment of righteous indignation you rend such a one limb from limb, you will almost certainly be subjected to the utmost rigour of the law, and you will be lucky if you escape a heavy fine of five or ten shillings, exclusive of the costs of the case. Now, this is not right on the face of it. It is even wrong. The law should take into account the extreme provocation which led to the action. Punish if you will the man who travels second-class with a third-class ticket, or who borrows a pencil and forgets to return it; but there are occasions when justice should be tempered with mercy, and this murdering of pedagogues is undoubtedly such an occasion.