B OOKS.

ROSSETTI'S EARLY ITALIAN POETS.*

Tme rare excellence of Mr. Rossetti's translations would be sufficient of itself to invest his book with a high interest for scholars. He has caught the spirit of Dante, and rendered the "Vita Nuova" with a fidelity of thought and phrase which, except for seeing it achieved, we should have considered impossible. But, besides all this, he has explored new regions, and discovered a cycle of poets who were practically unknown even to students of Italian literature. Travellers who cross the Alps for the first time, and whose ideas of Italian art have been drawn from the imperfect collections of Paris and Munich, are constantly astonished to find how many predecessors and con- temporaries of Raphael Itinticipated and partially rivalled even his genius. Fixere fortes ante ..etgamemnona, and the principle holds good for every province of action and thought. Generations of inferior men live on toiling by their little light, and building up small reputations till the great man is born who sums up the purpose of many lives in one. The world at large has only tune to study the master, and his predecessors and his school soon die out of remem- brance. There is no help for this, and, speaking generally, there is no great reason to regret it. But in the case of a poem like the " Din= Commedia," which stands and must remain single, summing up the whole Middle Ages in epical unity, blending human interests, Christian legend, and pagan thought in one great vision of the spiritual world, and irradiating even sin and pain with a pure light of its own, we can hardly be careless to know how the workman had learned his craft. For this purpose a better book than Mr. Rossetti's cannot be imagined. It is the selection, by one who is a poet and artist in every fibre himself, of thebest Italian poems of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. We showed, a fortnight ago, that it was im- possible thoroughly to understand the "Divine Commedia," unless it were approached from the "Vita Nuova ;" Mr. Rossetti proves that the " Vit a N nova," although the greatest work of its class, was yet conceived in the spirit of the older times, and modelled on earlier masterpieces. The fantastic conceits, the real pathos, the mixture of passionate de- sire and religious phraseology, the profuse, almost womanly senti- ment, and the suppressed strength of Dante's narrative and lyrical pieces, are all common-places of chivalrous poetry in the early summer of Italian greatness. It is curious to think of the poet as only one of a set, who consoled him in musical verse under his great sorrow, rebuked him in epigrammatic sonnets when he fell from better courses for a time, and cnticized his works as they appeared; even the smart reviewers of the day, who found little faults in his style, or suggested that his visions arose from a bad digestion, have retained the penumbra of a personality, and loom through all time like the broken and grotesque shadows of a ruin, which seem to vindicate darkness against the sun. There was no need for Dante to put Cecco Angiolen, or Dante da Maiano in Hell. Although the translation of the "Vita Nuova" is comparatively a small part of this volume, it is perhaps the most carefully executed, and having probably been a labour of love, its influence seems to colour the whole book. Accordingly the fault of Mr. Rossetti's render- ings—setting aside a little roughness of style and occasional slovenly rhymes such as "of" and "above," "wise" and "advice"—is that they are apt to be too good, and that the sustained dignity of Dante is transferred to less even writers. Mr. Rossetti's theory is excel- lent he holds "the life-blood of rhyme translation" to be "that a good shall not be turned into a bad one ;" he has scrupulously preserved the original metre, and he takes credit to himself, not altogether unjustly, for literalness under manifold temptation. "The task of the translator," he observes, "is one of some self-denial. Often would he avail himself of any special grace of his own idiom and epoch, if only his will belonged to him; often would some cadence serve him, but for his author's structure—some structure, but for his author's cadence. . . . Sometimes, too, a flaw in the work galls him, and he would fain remove it, doing- for the poet that which his age denied him ; but no, it is not in the bond.' All this has a certain, even a great, truth, but when all has been said, Mr. Rossetti is the contemporary of Tennyson, the student of Dante, and a poet himself; he is content to re- The Early Italiaa Poets; together with Daates Vita. Nueva. TM. misted by D. G. Rossetti London: Smith, Elder, and Co. produce Dante literally, and he reproduces inferior men in their entirety also, but with additions ; the base coin is fused and recast, to.be issued with the old stamp, but with a nobler metal. Having said this, we have said our worst, and although it is judging Manlius in sight of the Capitol to try Mr. Rossetti by extracts where the beauty of the addition so largely compensates the fault of inexact rendering, he deserves to be known by his best. We can hardly illustrate our meaning _better than by quoting some stanzas from a canzone of Frederic II., which have an undertone of deep German sentiment. They are the complaint of a woman unhappily married : "Oh that I never had been born A woman ! a poor, helpless fool, Who can but stoop beneath the rule Of him she needs must loathe and scorn! If ever I feel less forlorn,

I stand all day in fear and dule, Lest he discern it, and with rough Speech mock at me, or with his smile, So hard you scarce could call it guile : No man is there to say 'Enough.' Oh, but if God waits a long while, Death cannot always stand aloof. Thou God the Lord dost know all this : Give me a little comfort then.

Him who is worst among bad men Smite thou for me. Those limbs of his Once hidden where the sharp worm is, Perhaps I might see hope again. Yet for a certain period

Would I seem like as one that saith Strange things for grief, and murmnreth With smitten palms and hair abroad, Still whispering under my held breath, Shall I not praise thy name, 0 God." Compare the expanded thought in the first stanza with the simple original ; "if at any time I make merry, I stand in fear all day lest I be eyed by so toul a look ; when I heed it not lam beaten." Again, in the next stanza, the fourth and fifth lines, "might I but see him dead with abundance of pain and grief," is softened intoa mere wish for his death. Surely the rough vigour of the original was worth preserving. Apart from the facts that in the thirteenth century a woman was liable to positive brutality, and that the subtle analysis of feeling which Mr. Rossetti introduces is something of an ana- chronism, we really require some strong justification in an intolerable outrage from the man, if the wish for his death is not to seem mon- strous and degrading. But the passionate woman brooding over the blows she has received may be excused if she wishes for deliverance and vengeance; and the bitter prayer to see him die in agony is thus more consistent and natural than the mere hope that he may die and be buried.

We pass on to an exquisite poem, by Giaeomino Pugliesi, the more interesting as its subject—the loss of his lady—anticipates Dante's sorrow for Beatrice. Our space again constrains us to quote a frag- ment only:

"0 God, why haat thou made my grief so deep ?

Why set me in the dark to grope and pine ?

Why parted me from her companionship, And crushed the hope which was a gift of thine?

To think, dear, that I never any more Can see thee as before!

Who is it shuts thee in ?

Who hides that smile for which my heart is sore, And drowns those words which I am longing for, Lady of mine?

Where is my lady and the lovely face

She had, and the sweet motion when she walked ?

Her chaste mild favour, her so delicate grace—

Her eyes, her mouth, and the dear way she talk'd- Her courteous bending, her most noble air, The soft fall of her hair ?

My lady—she who to my soul so rare A gladness brought !

Now I do never see her anywhere, And may not, looking in her eyes, gain there The blessing which I sought."

Here the eighth and ninth lines are substituted for "Where now is set your teaching, and who hath taken from me your loyal heart ?" The first eight lines of the second stanza are literally, "Where are my lady and her teaching (insegnantento), her beauty and her knowledge, the sweet smile and the noble words, the eyes and the mouth and the noble air, her adornment and her courtesy, the high-born bearing, Ah, my lady ! through which I was ever in gladness." In this last instance it is difficult to regret the changes which have made beauty more beautiful, but it is the duty of the critic to point them out. We have said that Mr. Rossetti is best in his rendering of the "Vita Nuova," and comparing it with Mr. Martin's translation, which we have lately praised in high terms, and which we still think excellent of its kind, we cannot hesitate to give Mr. Rossetti's the preference. We said of Mr. Martin's, that with all its high merits it was not Dante—we think Mr. Rossetti's is ; and we know of no translation which renders the spirit and the language of a great author so faithfully. Without wishing to press this point of compa- rative excellence, we shall give our readers some opportunity of judging for themselves by quoting from the book. before us the same stanza which we gave a fortnight ago in Mr. Martin's version:

"Then lifting up mine eyes as the tears came, I saw the Angels, like a rain of manna, In a long flight flying back heavenward; Having a little eland in front of them, After the which they went and said ' Hosanna !'

And if they had said more you should have heard.

Then Love spoke thus : ' Now all shall be made clear; Come and behold our lady where she lies.'

These idle phantasies Then carried me to see my lady dead : And standing at her head Her ladies put a white veil over her ; And with her was such very humbleness That she appeared to say, I am at peace.'"

Prose could scarcely be more faithful than this beautiful transla- tion, except in the one line, "These idle phantasics," where "idle" partially fritters away the sense of "fallaee," "bewildering." The original thought is rather that the poet is cheated into happmess by a fond conceit of the brain, than that he stumbles upon it. But this is mere verbal criticism, and Mr. Rossettes version of the "Vita Nuova" remains none the less even, excellent, and, we are inclined to think, unsurpassable. Among the more curious pieces of this collection we may note an extract from the Diitamondo, a sort of Dantesque pilgrimage over earth, in which England is described. The black amber mentioned is pretty certainly the " ga,gates" of Solinus, and is probably jet, not coal, as Mr. Rossetti surmises. In the list of remarkable places, " Listenois and Strangoure" are certainly not Land's-End and Stone- henge. Strangoure was the kingdom of Kings Carodas and Bran. gores, in the old romance of Merlin, and from the way in which it is mentioned, with the principalities of Cumberland and the Marches, as well as from the analogy of the names Stranno, Stranraer, and Stran- fasket, it is probably to be looked for in Galloway. Listenois was the kingdom of King Pellam, and ought, if there he any truth in romance, to be somewhere on the way. from York to Gloucester, as Peredur, son of Evrauc, passed through it on his way to the city of Gloni. But we fear the Keith Johnstons of the middle ages have left its actual limits undefined. In another instance, Mr2Rossetti has guessed rightly in rendering "Rech" and "Nida," " Geraint" and "Enid." The fact is, Chrestien of Troyes transformed the Romano-British name Geraint into the Norse name Erec, which was, no doubt, more popular in Normandy. The account of the English kings is very amusing, though the story that King John took such revenge on France, "that still a moan is made of it," must have been derived from some English Livy of unscrupulous mendacity. Besides narrative and serious poems, Mr. Rossetti gives several specimens of village songs and caustic personal satires. These must be sought in his own pages. Perhaps where the subject is rather recondite, it would be too much to expect that even a book of such singular merit will ever become extensively popular; but it is certain to live ; and whenever it reaches a second edition, we hope Mr. Rossetti's pencil will illustrate the work of his pen.