vious chance for
a comparison between Dante and Milton such as Macaulay afterwards
elaborated in his essay on Milton. Goldsmith, who knew nothing of Dante
at first hand, wrote of him with the usual patronising ignorance of
eighteenth-century criticism as to anything outside of the Greek and
Latin classics: "He addressed a barbarous people in a method suited to
their apprehension, united purgatory and the river Styx, St. Paul and
Virgil, heaven and hell together; and shows a strange mixture of good
sense and absurdity. The truth is, he owes most of his reputation to the
obscurity of the times in which he lived." [1]

In 1782, William Hayley, the biographer of Cowper and author of that very
mild poem "The Triumphs of Temper," published a verse "Essay on Epic
Poetry" in five epistles. In his notes to the third epistle, he gave an
outline of Dante's life with a translation of his sonnet to Guido
Cavalcanti and of the first three cantos of the "Inferno." "Voltaire,"
he says, has spoken of Dante "with that precipitate vivacity which so
frequently led the lively Frenchman to insult the reputation of the
noblest writers." He refers to the "judicious and spirited summary" of
the "Divine Comedy" in Warton, and adds, "We have several versions of the
celebrated story of Ugolino; but I believe no entire canto of Dante has
hitherto appeared in our language. . . . The author has been solicited
to execute an entire translation of Dante, but the extreme inequality of
this poet would render such a work a very laborious undertaking; and it
appears very doubtful how far such a version would interest our country.
Perhaps the reception of these cantos may discover to the translator the
sentiments of the public." Hayley adopted "triple rhyme," _i.e._, the
_terza rima_, and said that he did not recollect it had ever been used
before in English. His translation is by no means contemptible--much
better than Boyd's,--but fails entirely to catch Dante's manner or to
keep the strange precision and picturesqueness of his phrase. Thus he
renders

"Chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco,"

"Whose voice was like the whisper of a lute";

and the poet is made to address Beatrice--O donna di virtu--as "bright
fair," as if she were one of the belles in "The Rape of the Lock." In
this same year a version of the "Inferno" was printed privately and
anonymously by Charles Rogers, a book and art collector and a friend of
Sir Joshua Reynolds. But