BOOKS.

MRS. RAMSAY'S DANTE.*

AMONG the numerous versions of Dante which have lately been commenced, this is, we believe, the fourth since Carey's, in which the whole of the Divina Commedia is now comprised, and the second of these that preserves the " metre and triple rhyme," though to the same class we may soon have to add the work of Mr. Weeley Thomas, whose " Purgatorio" has been completed upwards of a twelvemonth. Carey conformed his style and versification to purely English models in a way which has been thought essential to vernacular elegance, but which is now censured as incompatible with, or at least dangerous to, the genuine rendering of remote and antique authors. His forms of composition forced him to disguise Dante's manner, if not so extravagantly as Homer's is disguised by Pope and others, yet to an extent always uncomfortable to those who have some knowledge of the original. The task of remedying his deficiencies seemed comparatively simple ; for Dante's rhythm, though difficult in English, is not formed from such unfamiliar elements us the feet of a classical hexameter, nor so hard to analyze as the quantities of a modern language ; so that more difficult problems have recently been taken up with eagerness. Among themselves the new translators of the Italian poet differ little in their avowed maxims; and their desire to evince their independence has made each take very little cognizance of the views and perform- ances of his predecessors. They must be compared by traits of dexterity or of judicious compromise, which it is easy to note one by one, but hard to balance where so many feats have been requisite. Mrs. Ramsay's version is strongly recommended by its general fluency and smoothness, and if it holds but a middle posi- tion for the terse and precise rendering of the most pithy passages, yet its shortcomings are veiled with a degree of grace that may cause them to be comparatively overlooked. In metrical proprieties she is deliberately lax, ending her cantos with Alexandrines. running triplets continually into one another, repeating rhymes within the same canto, and making them fall on common or unim- portant words, often even on expletives like ./ leis, I ween. With all these licences she does not escape the fault of using many weak and superfluous epithets, but she abstains well enough from attempting to amplify or develop her author's con- ceptions by positive efforts of her own imagination or under- standing. In commenting her speciality is the knowledge of localities and ancient remains, which she claims to derive from a long residence in Italy—a knowledge which is liberally and often irrelevantly displayed, though, perhaps, with a well- founded confidence that it will have its charm for the present travelling generation. In other respects, her notes do not show any remarkable amount of study ; the authorities whom she follows or discusses are vaguely and curtly indicated as some commentators, and often, of course, observed to be much perplexed; if she mentions any by name, they are seldom the most solid critics. She has not said a word of any English translators or expositors, nor, apparently, made much use of any, except, perhaps, in the notes to her third volume, where the immediate source of several useful excerpts is betrayed by the style of the prose renderings. She makes few references to Dante's minor works, or to the other poets of his time. She explains mythological allusions by extracts from Lempriere, with- out troubling herself as to the particular authors in whom Dante read and studied them. Yet she hazards a conjecture as to the inspiration which the Divina Commedia, and, more directly, the Sixth Aeneid, received from Plato's "Timreus;" but seems altogether to forget the world of spirits more anciently described in the Eleventh Odyssey. The Hades of this last poem is cer- tainly a very rude one in its fundamental conception. Its shades lead a dreary and empty life, to which the meanest earthly lot would appear preferable. It is only a few deified heroes, or else violent offenders against the deities, that receive any appropriate recompense for their deeds in the flesh. The ghosts have not even a distinct consciousness of what they originally were, or any human capacities of thought, except during the time when they are refreshed by the necro- mancer with his draughts of warm blood, &c. The system had, as yet, no moral foundations, and rested essentially, it would appear, on the deep and agitating impressions that are left upon rude minds by the remembrances of departed friends,

• Deuites Dirina Conmeliq, translated into English in the metre and triple rhyme of the original, 'with notes. 13) Mrs. Ramsay. London : Tinsley Brothers. 1862-63.

whose imperfectly continued existence seemed to manifest itself by dreams and portents. To this theme Virgil added dignity by the rough justice which he dispenses in his Tartarus and Elysium, his mournful fields of loving suicides, and his pageants of armed shades of warriors ; he still more improved it by in- troducing the theory of transmigration, which established a vital connection between the world of the dead and the future of the community of mankind, as we see when Anchises points out to his son the spirits who were hereafter to become distinguished in Roman history. This description, moreover, had political bearings, which Dante manifests a strong desire to appropriate to his poem ; it comprised a glorification of the empire of Augustus Caesar, and a vindication of the right of the Romans to govern the world and to lay the foundations of a universal order. In these elements both the Italian poems are more sublime than their prototype, while Dante's is elevated above Virgil's by the awful sense of a positive eternity that pervades it. But it is from the author of the "Odyssey" that they both have derived the dramatic tone and historical character with which they are imbued, and which is essentially foreign to Plato's unsub- stantial visions. And from the "Odyssey" many beautiful emblems and legends have descended to the "Aeneid," and a few from thence to the Divine Comedy, so as to have traversed the whole bimil- lennial interval that separates the Christian poet from the poet of of a rude and Nigritian superstition. The fables of the Gorgon's. head, the giant Ephialtes, and the voyages of Ulysses himself, are faintly remembered by Virgil, but receive a new and striking development from the hand of Dante.

To illustrate the above criticisms more particularly, let us turn to the sixth canto of the " Paradise," where we find a triumphant enumeration of the heroes of Rome and their exploits; whioh is put in the mouth of the Emperor Justinian, and designed to show that Providence had appointed that nation to found a perpetual and inviolable empire on the earth. This argument has been sketched out in Dante's "Convito," in which, as also in the Comedy, his examples are mostly derived from the quasi-predictions of the Sixth Aeneid, supplemented by the modem history of Belisatius, Charlemagne, &c. Every moderately studious reader should compare the canto with the sources we have indicated; but Mrs.

Ramsay tells us nothing about either the "Aeneid " or the " Con- vito." Only she is diffuse on the Lempriere history of the Decii and Fabii, and even on Janus's Temple, to which Dante has referred in a way somewhat trite and cursory. She finds occa- sion to describe the arch of Janus Quadrifrons, which still exists in Rome, and to remark that it seems the original type of the beautiful town halls and exchanges in Italy,—a good observa- tion, perhaps, but it might have been better employed in a private communication to the editor of Murray's hand-book. So, where our poet touches on Caesar's victories in the Gallic cam- paign, as bruited through

"Every valley whence the Rhone is filled," we are told,- " To this day, in the tributary valleys of the Rhone, there are traces of the conquests of Julius Omar. In Canton Valais, Switzer- land, some of his legions remained as colonists ; and one is startled by meeting the dark flashing eyes, black hair, and brilliant smile of the South, instead of the sandy complexion and snub noses of the Swiss. At Champery, in particular, at the foot of the Dent du Midi, one might believe oneself to be in the Roman Campagna, as far as the personal appearance of the peasants is concerned."

There is no dull or wilful irrelevance in notes like these, but

Mrs. Ramsay has not quite enough reading for a thoroughly serious annotation, and she gives us a little easy padding by way of apology. She has studied better the lives of the saints and churchmen mentioned in Dante's " Paradise," of most of which she has written agreeable and edifying abstracts.

Mrs. Ramsay has effectively rendered several passages of which the style is eloquent, but the matter not complex, as in the noble doctrine concerning the inequalities of bliss in heaven, which we find in the "Paradise," Canto II.

"But ye who here are blest, I pray you, tell If ye desire a higher place above,

More to behold, or nearer God to dwell ?

That company my words appeared to move Somewhat to smile ; then joyful, she replied, And seemed to glow in the first fire of love.

Brother, our will doth tranquilly abide In charity, which makes us but desire The thing we have, nor long for aught beside.

If to supernal heights we should aspire, Our wills were then discordantly inclined From Him who bade our wishes soar no higher And discord in these homes ye may not find, If here we needs must charity possess ; And to its nature well thou bend'st thy mind, For 'tis essential to this life of bliss To hold ourselves within the Will Divine. That thus our wills should be at one with His, And we from threshold unto threshold shine Throughout this realm: yet all it pleaseth well ; As pleasing Him who (loth to His design Conform our hearts; and surely here we dwell In peace for evermore : this is the sea Whereto all Nature and Creation still Are moved.' And thus it was made clear to me How everywhere is Paradise in Heaven, Although God's highest favour therein be In divers ways and divers measures given."

The following version of another admired passage is more open to censure. It comprises the account of Florence in the olden time, which Dante hears from his ancestor Cacciaguida:—

" Florence, within thine ancient walls, whence fell,

And still doth fall, upon the listening ear The chime of tierce and nones, thy sons did dwell In sober peace. Nor did thy dames appear With diadems and chains, and daintiness Of broider'd shoes ; nor girdles did they bear More beauteous than their wearers. Nor distress Arose at birth of daughters, lest their dowers Should be too scant or fit occasion pass ; Then did no palace raise its lofty towers, All void and tenantless And Booth, their dames were, in their simple life, On spindle and on distaff all intent. O happy days, when each one knew aright His certain place of sepulture ! None went To seek for gain in France ; nor in his flight His wife deserted. In each quiet home,

With baby speech that parents doth delight,

One soothed her child, and one the locks did comb From off the distaff, singing soft and low Of Troy and of Fiesole and Rome."

In the first lines the pretty phrase about chimes falling on the listening ear distracts our attention from the general meaning, which is simply that the ancient boundaries of Florence were adjacent to what was still her principal church. For the "sons of Florence " dwelling " in sober peace," we have in the original Florence (a feminine noun) standing "in peace, sober and modest;" and these are virtues that would not have become the male popu- lation exclusively. We do not understand the burghers being distressed lest dowers should be " too scant," or the contrary. Dante appears to praise two things in the bygone days, namely that girls were not married too young or too highly dowered, literally, that the age and the dower did not deviate from the proper mean in opposite directions (quinci e quindi). Then, in Dante it is the wives who knew where they would be buried, and they told tales to their children (without singing them) " Of Troy, Fesulte, and Rome." In the whole passage there is a decided loss in the signification, without a thorough imitation of the rhythm ; for the triplets are not sharply divided, as in the original, nor do the rhymes fall on words of much signifi- cance.