The First Canticle [Inferno] of the Divine Comedy of Dante
Alighieri. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. (Now York : Putnam. London: Low, Son, and Marston.)—We recommend this version of the Inferno to Professor Longfellow. He will acknowledge that Mr. Parsons has turned Italian poetry into English poetry, not sticking at every word and every line, but doing his best to acclimatize Dante in America. To our minds, Mr. Parsons has achieved a decided success. Of course his version is not equal to the original ; it is far nferior in conciseness and pith, in strength and earnestness. As the lines of the original are not strictly followed, a thought is sometimes beaten out a little too fine, and the essential parts of a thought are some- times left out altogether. Take as an instance the two lines at the end of canto v., into which the four lines of the original are condensed, and which altogether fail to reproduce a most touching picture. But as a general rule Mr. Parsons seems a fair translator of Dante's poem, though not a translator of Dante himself. Dante, however, is untrans- latable.
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