rue Dantesque
manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the
pliability, the sweetness of the English tongue."

If we turn to English scholars, we shall find them holding the same
language, and equally ready to assure you that you may confidently
accept Cary's version as a faithful transcript of the spirit and letter
of the original. And this was the theory of translation throughout
almost the first half of the present century. Cary's position in 1839
was higher even than it was in 1824. With many other claims to respect,
he was still best known as the translator of Dante.

In 1839 Mr. Longfellow published five passages from the _Purgatorio_,
translated with a rigorous adhesion to the words and idioms of the
original. Coming out in connection with translations from the Spanish
and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place
among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected
to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for
they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great
problems of literature,--Can poetry pass from one language into another
without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and expression?
Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, had answered no for Greek and Latin,
Coleridge for German, Fairfax and Rose and Cary for Italian. But if Mr.
Longfellow could translate the whole of the _Divina Commedia_ as he had
translated these five passages, great as some of these names were, it
was evident that the lovers of poetry would call for new translations of
all the great poets. This he has now done. The whole poem is before us,
with its fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, the
English answering line for line and word for word to the original
Italian. We purpose to show, by a careful comparison of test-passages
with corresponding passages of Cary, what the American poet has done for
the true theory of translation.

It is evident that, while both translators have nominally the same
object in view, they follow different paths in their endeavors to reach
it; or, in other words, that they come to their task with very different
theories of translation, and very different ideas of the true meaning of
faithful rendering. Translation, according to Mr. Cary, consists in
rendering the author's idea without a strict adherence to the author's
words. According to Mr. Longfellow, the author's words form a nece