PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR TO THE FIRST EDITION
PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR TO THE FIRST EDITION
The two Dramas, PICCOLOMINI, or the first part of WALLENSTEIN, and WALLENSTEIN, are introduced in the original manuscript by a Prelude in one Act, entitled WALLENSTEIN’S
CAMP. This is written in rhyme, and in nine-syllable verse, in
the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted) 5
with the second Eclogue of Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar.
This Prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not
deficient in character; but to have translated it into prose, or
into any other metre than that of the original, would have
given a false notion both of its style and purport; to have 10