very in every collection, it was worth Mr. Wright's while to undertake a new version of Dante? There are many poems of great merit, ancient and modern, which have never been interpreted to the mere English reader at all; many more of which the only existing versions are miserably deficient in every respect. Under such circumstances, surely Dante could not be a judicious choice, unless the new translator felt himself qualified to surpass, to some considerable extent, the effect of his predecessor's performance to convey at once a more exact impression of his author's meaning, and a livelier one of his manner. If Mr. Wright has succeeded in rendering Dante more accurately than Mr. Cary had done here and there, only by availing himself of certain recent commentaries on the original, of which Mr. Cary might have been expected to make use in preparing a new edition of his work; if, with the exception of these detached passages, the later version is not a more faithful one-and if it does not, as a whole, wear an air more Dantesque without being less English, than the former-we shall be compelled, not to treat disrespectfully a well-meant and industrious effort, but to express our regret that the time and talents devoted to it had not found some unpreoccupied field - and to urge the propriety of suspending a labour which, if completed, could at best conduct to a secondary place. We are bound to observe in limine that the version of Cary has been of infinite use to his successor; Mr. Wright has taken from him not a few lines, and in innumerable instances he has obviously and incontestably drawn his words, not directly from the Italian fountainhead, but from the previous English (and manly English that is) of his predecessor. Cary has been in the main the Dante of Mr. Wright; and he has departed from him nowhere, as far as we have been able to trace, to any good effect, unless when guided by Ugo Foscolo, or by Rossetti-of whose Commentary, indeed, he not seldom inlays fragments into his text; a liberty which had better been omitted. No doubt, then, it is on his nearer approach to the air and manner of the Italian master, that the new interpreter rests his claim to supplant Cary; and when we opened his book, we certainly did not doubt that the gigantic task of rendering Dante in the terza rima had now at all events been accomplished. But a very brief examination dismissed this dream. Mr. Wright's measure is the Dantesque one to the eye, but not to the ear. is printed exactly like the Italian verse-but the writer has not grappled with the difficulties, and he has missed the chief grace, of the terza rima:-he has few triple rhymes at all-and none in the right places; and the subtle link by which Dante binds every section of his measure into the succeeding one is thus wholly lost. It The The result, then, is not an English Inferno in the measure of Dante, instead of the measure of Milton; but only the sense of Cary twisted out of blank verse into a new and anomalous variety of English rhyme--whether a harmonious or a graceful one, or at all likely to take root among us, we shall enable the reader to judge. We select, by way of specimen, a few of those passages which are most familiar to every one; but which are so, simply because no reader thinks he can have them too often before him; and first the opening of CANTO III. Per me si va nella città dolente : Giustizia mosse 'l mio älto Fattore: La somma Sapienza, e 'l primo Amore. Through me you pass into the city of woe: Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon-ye who enter here. Wright. Through me ye enter the abode of woe: Through me to endless sorrow are convey'd: Through me amidst the souls accurst ye go. Justice did first my lofty Maker move: By Power Almighty was my fabric made, By highest wisdom, and by primal love. Ere I was form'd, no things created were, Save those eternal-I eternal last: All hope abandon-ye who enter here. In neither of these versions is the greatest beauty, save one, of this passage entirely preserved; the triple repetition of the per me si va. This might have been attempted; the effect of the transition from the solemn absolute si va, to the terrible Lasciate voi of the ninth line, a magnificent feature, was perhaps unattainable. Cary's first line is more literal than Wright's-and we like its sound better. His third line too is the happier; Mr. Wright's variations of ye enter ye are conveyed-ye go, are very bad. In the second tiercet Wright has transposed, and not mended, Cary; his third line is worse than the corresponding one; he omits judiciously, however, Cary's interpolation of task: a task implies a master. In the third tiercet the advantage is on all points with Cary; Wright's those eternal is not inscriptional, and he loses a link in omitting omitting 'ed io,' &c. not to be replaced by the weak modern invention of a hyphen (—); even commas and semicolons are out of place on marble. Cary's endure is better than his last. The closing line is not Mr. Wright's. Quivi sospiri, pianti, ed alti guai Diverse lingue, orríbili favelle, Ed io ch' avéa d' errór la testa cinta, Here sighs, with lamentations and loud There sighs and sorrows, and heart-rending cries Resounded through the starless atmos In Wright's first line sorrows is no translation of pianti; in his second, heart-rending is not alti, nor does cries render guai. Cary is better; but we suspect Dante's ascent is from sighs to moans, and from thence to wailings. Both miss the sense of the third line; Dante weeps-tears only gather in Wright's eyes; and al cominciar does not mean at entering, as Cary supposes, but at the first-i. e. before the poet understands exactly that the sounds he hears are those of merited suffering. He was still in the error (which Wright blunders into horror) of the tenth line. The second tiercet is not well done by either; Wright's harsh tongues discordant does not express diverse lingue-the tongues of different nations; his horrible discourse is not quite so wide of the original as Cary's horrible languages―(Dante would hardly have used favelle in exactly the same sense as he had just done lingue); but it is vulgar-and it is not a complete translation. The The poet's meaning is the various utterances of anguish, which he proceeds to enumerate. Parole di dolore are not outcries, but, words of woe; and despair does not yet speak,--that is reserved for the close the description again goes crescendo-there are words of grief, then accents of rage, then high and hoarse voices, and 'hands together smote,' in unison with them-this is the despair. Nothing can be worse than Wright's arrangement: despair then despite (what bathos !)-then the striking of hands removed from its place after all the favelle, and thrust in between the despite and the curses, neither of which are Dante's. Cary's eighth line, 'Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd,' is a fine one; the solid, though hardly senza tempo, is worth an infidelity the corresponding line in Wright is commonplace. : The heart-rending story of Count Ugolino in Canto XXXIII., the subject of by far the first historical picture of the English school, has of course been executed by both these translators with the utmost care and reflection : Quand' io fui desto innanzi la dimane, Già éran desti, e l' ora s' appressava Ed io sentí' chiavár l'uscio di sotto : Però non lagrimái, nè rispós' io Tutto quel giorno nè la notte appresso, When I awoke, and ask When I awoke, ere morn its rays had shed, near, of fear, Heard, The parenthesis in Cary's third line is bad; the most important feature in the father's misery is here, and he says my sons who were with me-not 'for they were with me;' Wright's sob for pianger is injudicious; the boys might utter in their sleep some sound of distress, but hardly a sob. His 'scant repast (from Rossetti) is also bad; this is not the epithet of one who had seen his children die of starvation; Cary's the mind of each misgave him,' not the other's pondering, is the true translation of Dante's dubitava. We think there can be no doubt that Wright (i. e. Rossetti) properly renders chiavar ‘nailed' not 'locked.' Cary confounds chiavo (clavus) with chiave (clavis); there could be nothing new in the sound of locking the prison gates, certainly nothing so decisively portentous as to make Ugolino turn all to stone within. It is a pity to drop the mio Anselmuccio; but 'one, my little Anselm,' is poor and prosaic. The tu guardi sì, padre: che hai? is far better in Cary than in Wright. Come un poco di raggio si fu messo Nel doloroso cárcere, ed io scorsi Ambo le mani per dolór mi morsi: E dísser: Padre, assái ci fia men doglia When a faint beam Wright. But, when a faint and broken ray was Within that dismal dungeou, and I view'd Through |