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man. The great writers of our own, no less than of the continental literatures, are familiar to him, and
Englishmen will be pleased to recognize in him a kindred genius, who belongs to the same generic
school of metaphysical and political speculation. Second to none among European scholars, the learned
of Germany have long since discovered his merits, and promptly profited by them [1]; for though their
soil is not fertile in historical talent, nor their alacrity in acknowledging foreign obligations remarkable,
yet their quickness of adaptation is not to be denied.
To the present translation, which originated in the desire to make known to the English public a
historical work of singular excellence, the author has given his sanction. The task was begun with a
perfect consciousness of its difficulty, and the wish that it might be performed, ab alio potiusquam a
me; a me potiusquam a nemine. The translator had been led by curiosity to seek information on
Swedish history, and regretted the entire absence of any work on the subject in our own language.
This deficiency, it may be remarked in passing, has certainly not been removed by the recent
appearance in an English form of a portion of Fryxell’s Stories from Swedish History [2]; a book which,
meagre, unsatisfactory, and feebly written, can lay claim to no serious consideration as one of any
authority or weight.
It has been the aim of the present translator, in essaying an English version of the only work
deserving to be regarded as the standard of Swedish history, to present a faithful and accurate image of
the style of the original; to render as exactly as possible every shade of meaning and variety of diction.
A translation should be close without stiffness, free and spirited without paraphrastic license. Whether
these objects have been attained in the present case it is for others to determine. I by no means assent
to a theory often maintained, which supposes true translation to be impossible, because nice distinctions
of meaning, and still more idiomatic forms of expression, are necessarily evanescent, and leave but a
caput mortuum to mock the toil of conversion. I believe it to be possible to reproduce in our language a
just presentment of any prose composition in another; and to transfuse the ideas in similar diction
without loss of force or grace. If the attempt fail, it must be ascribed not to its impracticability, but to an
imperfect command of the resources of the English tongue in the individual. With the noblest and
most comprehensive of modern languages as our instrument, it must be possible to find, even in the most
difficult cases, (of course those springing from some radical difference in the things symbolized are
excepted,) expressions of equivalent significancy, and more or less identical in the verbal meaning.
Some changes of collocation and structure must be permitted.
Whenever doubt was felt as to the true sense of the original, recurrence has been had to the
German version [3]; which, though containing many minor inaccuracies [4], avoided in the following pages, fulfils
by its general fidelity and vigour of style all the essentials of a translation. In some passages of the
Swedish original variations from the German are observable, apparently proceeding from the author’s
own pen; in these the former has been followed. The notes, it will be seen, are numerous; but they are
never necessary to the text, and should be regarded, like those of Gibbon, in the light of corroborative
matter, which may be read or not at pleasure. A few turning on minute topographical or technical
points (chiefly in Chapters II. and X.) have been omitted or abridged, as possessing only domestic
interest; those supplied by the translator are brief explanations of points on which many English readers
might possibly feel at a loss. It was originally intended to give a map of Scandinavia; but the idea was
abandoned, because maps are now-a-days easily procured, and maps of Germany, Poland, and Russia
would have been scarcely less necessary.
Professor Geijer’s style bears a remarkable resemblance to the mode in which the old English
writers thought and expressed themselves,—a circumstance coincident with the expectations we should
be inclined to form from affinities of race, and analogies of language [5] and situation, nor likely to prove
a discommendation to English readers, especially at the present day. Its peculiar quality seems to be
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