'Een Beytie Hollansche'

Dutch Compositions

[p. xxix]

On the Dutch Text and the English Translation

Physically Boswell's Dutch Compositions consist of 20 quarto pages, roughly 8 by 6.25 inches (20.5 by 16 cms). Only the first is dated, internally, ‘Het eerst van Februari’. It was Boswell's plan to write one page every day; he seems to have managed to write 20 pages in about 35 days. In Boswell in Holland, the editor, Frederick A. Pottle, includes 12 of the 20 Dutch Compositions in English translation only.^37. With the exception of a few passages,^38. the Dutch text has never been published before, and an English translation only of part. There does exist a typewritten transcript and translation of the text, kindly supplied to us, along with a photocopy of the original manuscript in their possession, by the Editorial Committee of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell (with whose permission we have embarked on this book), probably intended for the research edition of the material related to Boswell's stay in the Netherlands, to be edited by the late Robert Warnock. This typescript we have consulted and occasionally made use of.

For this edition the Dutch text has been newly transcribed. Words crossed out have not been recorded; Boswell's use of capitals has been retained, as has his coupling or uncoupling of words; where a self-evident correction has been called for (as in Dutch Composition 6 where ‘hollasche’ stands for ‘hollansche’) the correction has been put between square brackets, in other cases [sic] is used; paragraphing has been introduced into the text and modern punctuation has been used.

The English translation has been thoroughly revised. Naturally, it has not always been possible to avoid the translation in the Yale typescript, which curiously enough is not always the same as that found in Boswell in Holland. Differences are partly due to the fact that here the Yale transcript of the Dutch text has been revised in several places (where the original appears to have been misread), and partly due to our intention to produce a readable modern English text - the Yale translation on occasions being rather stilted in its attempt either to

37. Entitled ‘Dutch Themes’, Pottle includes numbers 1-3, 5-8, 10-11, 16-18 (Boswell in Holland, 129-30 and 132, 134-36, 144-45 and 148, 154-55 and 166).

38. In the Appendix to ‘'Envy, Fear, and Wonder': English Views of Holland and the Dutch’ (242-43: see, n. 18 above), Dutch Composition 3 was published, and extracts from 2 and 17, all with the translations as given by Pottle in Boswell in Holland.

[p. xxx]

translate Boswell as literally as possible or to produce an English text that conforms to Boswell's own eighteenth-century English style. Sometimes the Yale version (either that of Boswell in Holland or in the typescript) simply mistranslates the Dutch text.

Notes either on the text or on the people referred to in the text have only been supplied when absolutely necessary.