DANTE AND HIS TRANSLATORS.*

To trace the influence of Dante in English literature is a fascinating task. It illustrates at once the association of England with Italy, varying in strength and in character during the centuries since the poet was laid in his tomb at Ravenna ; and, not less significantly, it illustrates the tone of the literary world of England, its attitude towards romance, religion, mediaevalism, and epic poetry itself. It is this task which Dr. Paget Toynbee has set himself, and, we may say at once, has fulfilled to admiration. When the history of the revival of English interest in the great Florentine poet comes to be written, when, in other words, the subject of Dr. Toynbee's own book is carried beyond his concluding date to the beginning of the twentieth 3entury, and when the share which our country has had • (1) Domte in Rug1ish Literature from Chaucer to Cary (o. 13804844), By Paget Toynbee. 2 vols. Lendon Methuen and Co. [21,. net.]—(2) Dante'. Divine Comedy. Translated by Edward Wilberforce. 8 vole. London; Mac. =Ulan and Co. [100. 13d, net.]

in the serious Dante scholarship of Europe during the last fifty years is estimated, it will be found that to the

great services of Cary, who still, uniquely among our country- men, deserves the simple words which commemorate him on his grave in Westminster Abbey as " the translator of Dante," must be added those of the two foremost scholars who are still happily with us,—Dr. Edward Moore, whose exact criticism and judicious labours on the text of his author have received the recognition in Italy which they deserved; and Dr. Paget Toynbee, whose minute investigation of French and English literature and whose encyclopaedic labours in illus- tration of the poet are informed throughout by a literary taste, and even charm, which are not common among com- mentators. Both these Oxford scholars continue to add to the indebtedness of all Dante students to their enthusiasm and their learning; and a third, from whom we are justified in looking for original contributions of unusual value, has recently appeared in Mr. W. H. V. Reade, the author of the important study of the relation of Dante to Thomas Aquinas. And the work of such leaders is supported by not a few societies which have taken the great Florentine for the subject of combined investigation. Most notable among them, perhaps, is the Oxford Dante Society, which, adorned in the past by the genius of Liddon and Pater, and still numbering among its members Mr. Bryce, Mr. W. P. Ker, Dr. Shadwell, and Its distinguished founder, is about to celebrate its century of meetings.

Before us we have two valuable illustrations of the progress of Dante study in England. The first is contained in the two stout volumes into which Dr. Toynbee has compressed the results of his remarkable industry and enthusiasm. He has gathered together an immense mass of references to Dante, and of translated passages apart from general translations of the Comedy or of one of its parts, that are to be found between the fourteenth century and the second half of the nineteenth, from Chaucer, who was the first to quote him, down to Cary,

who inaugurated the scientific study of his works. One is amazed at the extent to which it is evident that Dante has influenced English literature. England, though comparatively late in the field—as compared, for example, with Spain, where, at least from the beginning of the fifteenth century, the influence of Dante was probably more powerful than any other external force—was, within the comparatively limited range of the great leaders of her literary life, eager to assimilate; and there was no period—not even the eighteenth century, which was as regards Dante an age of " Goths "— in which the influence of the great Florentine was not an important, if at times indirect, power. The periods of influence may be easily distinguished. There is the age of Chaucer and his school, when English poets read Dante for pleasure and without any idea that they were doing anything remarkable. There is the half-affected admiration of the age of Elizabeth,' when poets, and even Spenser himself, were attracted to the Italian poet partly by the affectation of the day, and partly by the interest of literary craftsmanship. There is the age of Milton, who, like Chaucer, and—in spite of the laboured arguments of enthusiasts who .will argue any thing in support of their craze—unlike Shakespeare, had an intimate acquaintance with the Divine Commedia, and indeed beyond it. And lastly, if we end where Dr. Toynbee ends, there is the age of commentators and critics, some of them illustrators of English poetry, and some of them poets them- selves of the first rank, who for the first time made Dante known in England outside a narrow circle of people of letters. Till this time came, a time in which Dante really began to "come into his own in England," the ignorance of the greatest of Italian poets, not only among educated persons, but even among critics and poets, was indeed remarkable. The eighteenth century was at its worst, from a literary point of view, when it turned its self-complacent eyes on the poet of mediaeval Catholicism. Voltaire set the tone :—

"Vous voulez connattre le Dante, les Italians l'appollent diem , mais &est une divinite cachet): peu de goes entendent see oracles. Il a dos commentateurs, c'est peut-Gtre encore :me raison de plus pour n'etre pas compris. Sa reputation s'afformira toujours, parce qu'on ne to lit jamais."

Sir William Temple entirely ignored Dante in his list of great Italian writers. Neither Evelyn nor Addison in their Italian journeys seems to have taken the slightest notice of associa- tions with his poetry. Dr. Johnson ignored him in his jejune

reference to the influence of Italian writers on Milton, and the pretentious Swan of Lichfield considered him a " fire-and- smoke poet," and was shocked at his " transcending filthiness." As Dr. Toynbee says, "the one man in England in the eighteenth century who appears really to have known and appreciated Dante was Gray, who was regarded by his con- temporaries as ' perhaps the most learned man in Europe. , And it was from Gray that Cary learnt his enthusiasm, and was inspired to do what Boyd before him had attempted with so inadequate a sense of the requirements of the task, and to give to Englishmen a translation in true poetry of the greatest poet of the Middle Age. All this Dr. Toynbee traces in an introductory essay in interesting detail and with minute care. He rightly estimates also, as has not, we think, been done before, what Dante students owe to Coleridge, and, in different ways again, to Macaulay, to Shelley, and to Byron. It was Coleridge who told English folk what really to look for in the master. "Dante does not so much elevate your thoughts as send' them deeper." It was Macaulay who did justice to the poetic side of Cary's work, though he was certainly wrong in thinking that " there is no version in the world so faithful as" his. The

Andrea Febrer, in the fifteenth century, easily Bur; passed him in exactness, and there need be no wonder that be

did. Shelley was of all English poets most deeply affected by Dante. He read him seriously, consecutively, and with growing appreciation till he came to say that in "exquisite tenderness, and sensibility, and ideal beauty" he " excelled all poets except Shakespeare." His admiration was notable

enough to appear in Peacock's delightful Nightmare Abbey a year before he had thus expressed it to Leigh Hunt : Mr. Scythrop is found turning his back on the rest of the com- pany and reading Dante. Dante, indeed, as Peacock said, was "becoming fashionable." Lord Wellesley read and quoted him frequently—there is a passage in Lord Stanhope's Conversations with the Duke of Wellington

which illustrates this—and Byron, in so many things the mirror of his age, championed his claims to the highest excellence, with more vehemence perhaps than understanding. With Cary at last Dante came into his own.

Admiration and criticism alike led to translation. From

Chaucer downwards English poets had rendered famous Passages into their own tongue. The episodes of Ugolino and

of Francesca of Rimini were most commonly chosen. Perhaps

no single passage was more beautifully adapted than the lines at the beginning of the eighth canto of the Purgatorio by Byron in Don Juan :- " Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who salt 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 "-

lines which we may quote, since Dr. Toynbee seems to have omitted them from his selection.

The efforts, and the successes, of translators are a subject by themselves. It is natural that the successes should be greatest in the Romance languages; and probably none is so close or so happy in its rendering as that of Andreu Febrer. The first lines are typical of the whole :—

" En to mig del cami de nostra vide Me rotroba per una solva escura, Que la dreta via era fallida."

But to render Dante into a Teutonic tongue in his own terse rime is the most difficult of tasks. Chaucer, as Dr. Toynbee says, showed himself quite at ease in the metre. Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder essayed it, and the Earl of Surrey, and after them Milton. Shelley and Byron attempted it in versions from Dante, the former with much the greater success. But

Mr. Edward Wilberforce is, we believe, the first to render the

Whole Commedia into English in the closest resemblance to this original. It is impossible to deny the great care, the

great labour, the skill, the patience, of the version. And yet

we are compelled to doubt whether the success attained is really sufficient to counterbalance the sense of strain which is

evident throughout. Can English readers follow the metre, or

appreciate the regularity of the rhymes P The whole effect is unfamiliar in English. And the difficulty of fitting into the shackles a closely literal translation is very great indeed. Mr.

Edward Wilberforce has succeeded better than we should have thought was possible. But we cannot think that his work will, as poetry, bear comparison with that of Cary or Longfellow,

or with that of the Provost of Oriel, whose translation of the Purgatorio, Mr. Pater so truly said, is " singular in its union of minute and sensitive fidelity almost to the very syllables of the original, with that general sense of composure and breadth of effect which gives to the great mediaeval poem the air of a 'classics,' " and who, we have reason to hope, has continued his "work of rare patience and scholarship" into some cantos at least of the Paradiso. Mr. Wilberforce ie laborious and patient too, and shows careful scholarship in his notes; but we cannot but feel that at least much of his version is a dance in fetters. Grace is impossible without freedom. Take the beginning of the nineteenth canto of the Paradiso for example :—

"Appeared before mo with its wings outspread The beauteous image, which the souls entwined, Joyful in sweet fruition, perfected.

Each seemed a little ruby where enshrined The sun enkindled such an ardent ray That it refracted him mine eyes to blind.

And what it now behoves me to pourtray

Voice never bore, and will could never write, Nor ever was conceived by fancy's play.

For I both saw and hoard the beak recite, And with its voice sound and 'mine,' when would Conception rather We' and ' our' unite."

Is the gain of accuracy here balanced by the very obvious losses of poetry and clearness P But, as an exercise in verse and as a companion to Dante for one who can appreciate difficulties, we can truly commend Mr. Wilbelforce's work. Dr. Toynbee renders a more direct service, and it is one which we can hardly too highly praise. His book is a treasure-house of English " Dantism." It is a marvel, too, of accuracy. That the headline of p. 135, Vol. I., is misprinted is almost the only textual slip we have observed ; and the mass of illustra- tive matter that has been utilised is, without exaggeration, enormous.