Therefore, while acknowledging the accuracy with which Mr. Longfellow has kept pace with his original through line after line, following the "footing of its feet," according to the motto quoted on his title-page, I cannot but think that his accuracy would have been of a somewhat higher kind if he had now and then allowed himself a little more liberty of choice between English and Romanic words and idioms.

A few examples will perhaps serve to strengthen as well as to elucidate still further this position.

"Inferno," Canto III., line 22, according to Longfellow: --

"There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I at the beginning wept thereat."

According to Cary: --

"Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans Resounded through the air pierced by no star, That e'en I wept at entering."

According to Parsons: --

"Mid sighs, laments, and hollow howls of woe, Which, loud resounding through the starless air, Forced tears of pity from mine eyes at first."

Canto V., line 84: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "Fly through the air by their volition borne." CARY. -- "Cleave the air, wafted by their will along." PARSONS. -- "Sped ever onward by their wish alone."

Canto XVII., line 42: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders." CARY -- "That to us he may vouchsafe The aid of his strong shoulders." PARSONS. -- "And ask for us his shoulders' strong support."

Canto XVII., line 25: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "His tail was wholly quivering in the void, Contorting upwards the envenomed fork That in the guise of scorpion armed its point." CARY. -- "In the void Glancing, his tail upturned its venomous fork, With sting like scorpions armed."

PARSONS. -- "In the void chasm his trembling tail he showed, As up the envenomed, forked point he swung, Which, as in scorpions, armed its tapering end."

Canto V., line 51: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "People whom the black air so castigates. CARY. -- "By the black air so scourged."

Line 136: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating." CARY. -- "My lips all trembling kissed."

"Purgatorio," Canto XV., line 139: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "We passed along, athwart the twilight peering Forward as far as ever eye could stretch Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent."

Mr. Cary's "bright vespertine ray" is only a trifle better; but Mr. Wright's "splendour of the evening ray" is, in its simplicity, far preferable.

Canto XXXI., line 131: --

LONGFELLOW. -- "Did the other three advance Singing to their angelic saraband."

CARY. -- "To their own carol on they came Dancing, in festive ring angelical "

WRIGHT. -- "And songs accompanied their angel dance."

Here Mr. Longfellow has apparently followed the authority of the Crusca, reading

"Cantando al loro angelico carribo,"

and translating carribo by saraband, a kind of Moorish dance. The best manuscripts, however, sanction M. Witte's reading: --

"Danzando al loro angelico carribo."

If this be correct, carribo cannot signify "a dance," but rather "the song which accompanies the dance"; and the true sense of the passage will have been best rendered by Mr. Cary.

Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation is kept free from oddities of diction and construction, it is very animated and vigorous. Nothing can be finer than his rendering of "Purgatorio," Canto VI., lines 97-117: --

"O German Albert! who abandonest Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage, And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow,

May a just judgment from the stars down fall Upon thy blood, and be it new and open, That thy successor may have fear thereof:

Because thy father and thyself have suffered, By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, The garden of the empire to be waste.

Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti, Monaldi and Filippeschi, careless man! Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed!

Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds, And thou shalt see how safe [?] is Santafiore.

Come and behold thy Rome that is lamenting, Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims 'My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?'

Come and behold how loving are the people; And if for us no pity moveth thee, Come and be made ashamed of thy renown."

So, too, Canto III., lines 79-84: --

"As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold By ones, and twos, and threes, and the others stand Timidly holding down their eyes and nostrils,

And what the foremost does the others do Huddling themselves against her if she stop, Simple and quiet, and the wherefore know not."

Francesca's exclamation to Dante is thus rendered by Mr. Longfellow: --

"And she to me: There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery."

Inferno, V. 121-123.

This is admirable, -- full of the true poetic glow, which would have been utterly quenched if some Romanic equivalent of dolore had been used instead of our good Saxon sorrow. So, too, the "Paradiso," Canto I., line 100: --

"Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, Her eyes directed toward me with that look A mother casts on a delirious child."

And, finally, the beginning of the eighth canto of the "Purgatorio": --

"'T was now the hour that turneth back desire In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell; And the new pilgrim penetrates with love, If he doth hear from far away a bell That seemeth to deplore the dying day."

This passage affords an excellent example of what the method of literal translation can do at its best. Except in the second line, where "those who sail the sea" is wisely preferred to any Romanic equivalent of naviganti the version is utterly literal; as literal as the one the school-boy makes, when he opens his Virgil at the Fourth Eclogue, and lumberingly reads, "Sicilian Muses, let us sing things a little greater." But there is nothing clumsy, nothing which smacks of the recitation-room, in these lines of Mr. Longfellow. For easy grace and exquisite beauty it would be difficult to surpass them. They may well bear comparison with the beautiful lines into which Lord Byron has rendered the same thought: --

"Soft hour which wakes the wish, and melts the heart, Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way, As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay. Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns!"

Setting aside the concluding sentimental generalization, -- which is much more Byronic than Dantesque, -- one hardly knows which version to call more truly poetical; but for a faithful rendering of the original conception one can hardly hesitate to give the palm to Mr. Longfellow.

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The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske, 1876