been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in
his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of
unutterable despair sounding in the line

"Ahi, dura terra, perche non t' apristi?"

can rest satisfied with the interpretation

"Ah, obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?"

yet this rendering is literally exact.

A second obstacle, hardly less formidable, hardly less fatal to a
satisfactory translation, is presented by the highly complicated system
of triple rhyme upon which Dante's poem is constructed. This, which must
ever be a stumbling-block to the translator, seems rarely to interfere
with the free and graceful movement of the original work. The mighty
thought of the master felt no impediment from the elaborate artistic
panoply which must needs obstruct and harass the interpretation of the
disciple. Dante's terza rima is a bow of Odysseus which weaker mortals
cannot bend with any amount of tugging, and which Mr. Longfellow has
judiciously refrained from trying to bend. Yet no one can fail to remark
the prodigious loss entailed by this necessary sacrifice of one of the
most striking characteristics of the original poem. Let any one who has
duly reflected upon the strange and subtle effect produced on him by
the peculiar rhyme of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," endeavour to realize the
very different effect which would be produced if the verses were to
be alternated or coupled in successive pairs, or if rhyme were to be
abandoned for blank verse. The exquisite melody of the poem would be
silenced. The rhyme-system of the "Divine Comedy" refuses equally to be
tampered with or ignored. Its effect upon the ear and the mind is quite
as remarkable as that of the rhyme-system of "In Memoriam"; and the
impossibility of reproducing it is one good reason why Dante must always
suffer even more from translation than most poets.

Something, too, must be said of the difficulties inevitably arising from
the diverse structure and genius of the Italian and English languages.
None will deny that many of them are insurmountable. Take the third line
of the first canto,--

"Che la diritta via era smarrita,"

which Mr. Longfellow translates

"For the straightforward pathway had been lost."

Perhaps there is no better word than "lost" by which to translate
smarrita in this place; yet the two words are far from equivalent
in force. About the word smarrita there is thr