In this way Mr. Longfellow's translation is, to an eminent degree,
realistic. It is a work conceived and executed in entire accordance
with the spirit of our time. Mr. Longfellow has set about making a
reconstructive translation, and he has succeeded in the attempt. In view
of what he has done, no one can ever wish to see the old methods of
Pope and Cary again resorted to. It is only where he fails to be truly
realistic that he comes short of success. And, as already hinted, it
is oftenest through sheer excess of LITERALISM that he ceases to be
realistic, and departs from the spirit of his author instead of coming
nearer to it. In the "Paradiso," Canto X. 1-6, his method leads him into
awkwardness:--

"Looking into His Son with all the love
Which each of them eternally breathes forth,
The primal and unutterable Power
Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves
With so much order made, there can be none
Who this beholds without enjoying Him."

This seems clumsy and halting, yet it is an extremely literal paraphrase
of a graceful and flowing original:--

"Guardando nel suo figlio con l' amore
Che l' uno e l' altro eternalmente spire,
Lo primo ed ineffabile Valore,
Quanto per mente o per loco si gira
Con tanto ordine fe', ch' esser non puote
Senza gustar di lui ehi cio rimira "

Now to turn a graceful and flowing sentence into one that is clumsy
and halting is certainly not to reproduce it, no matter how exactly the
separate words are rendered, or how closely the syntactic constructions
match each other. And this consideration seems conclusive as against
the adequacy of the literalist method. That method is inadequate, not
because it is too REALISTIC, but because it runs continual risk of being
too VERBALISTIC. It has recently been applied to the translation of
Dante by Mr. Rossetti, and it has sometimes led him to write curious
verses. For instance, he makes Francesca say to Dante,--

"O gracious and benignant ANIMAL!"

for

"O animal grazioso e benigno!"

Mr. Longfellow's good taste has prevented his doing anything like this,
yet Mr. Rossetti's extravagance is due to an unswerving adherence to the
very rules by which Mr. Longfellow has been guided.

Good taste and poetic genius are, however, better than the best of
rules, and so, after all said and done, we can only conclude that Mr.
Longfellow has given us a