rder of the
original; we have the exact words of the original, _disciolta_ meaning
_disengaged_ as well as _detached_, and therefore the ideas of the
original without modification or change. The passage is not a remarkable
one in form, although a very important one in the description of which
it forms a part. The sonorous second line of Mr. Cary's version is
singularly false to the movement, as well as to the thought, of the
original. Mr. Longfellow's lines have the metric character of Dante's
precise and direct description.

The next triplet brings out the difference between the two theories even
more distinctly:--

"E la percossa pianta tanto puote
Che della sua virtute l'aura impregna,
E quella poi girando intorno scuote."

And the stricken plant has so much power
That with its virtue it impregnates the air,
And that then revolving shakes around.

Thus far Dante.

"And in the shaken plant such power resides,
That it impregnates with its efficacy
The voyaging breeze, upon whose subtle plume
_That_, wafted, flies abroad."

Thus far Cary.

Cary's first line is a tolerably near approach to the original, although
a distinction might be made between the force of _power resides in_, and
_power possessed by_. The second line falls short of the conciseness of
the original by transposing the object of _impregnates_ into the third.
This, however, though a blemish, might also be passed over. But what
shall we say to the expansion of _aura_ into a full line, and that line
so Elizabethan and un-Dantesque as

"The voyaging breeze upon whose subtle plume"?

In this, too, Mr. Cary is faithful to his theory. Mr. Longfellow is
equally faithful to his:--

"And so much power the stricken plant possesses,
That with its virtue it impregns the air,
And this, revolving, scatters it around."

We have seen how Cary's theory permits the insertion of a new line, or,
more correctly speaking, the expansion of a single word into a full
line. But it admits also of the opposite extreme,--the suppression of an
entire line.

"Ch'io vidi, e anche udi'parlar lo rostro,
E sonar nella voce ed _io_ e _mio_,
Quand'era nel concetto _noi_ e _nostro_."

For I saw and also heard speak the beak,
And sound in its voice and _I_ and _my_,
When it was in the conception _we_ and _our_.

_Paradiso_, XIX. 10.

There