e converted
into eight lines of eight syllables each. We submit it to the candid
reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been
sacrificed to brevity.

The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to
which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for
the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic
verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does
not feel the want.

One more short passage of four lines,--the famous figure of the lark
in the twentieth Canto of the "Paradiso":--

Like lark that through the air careers,
First singing, then, silent his heart,
Feeds on the sweetness in his ears,
Such joy to th' image did impart
Th' eternal will.

This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but,
nevertheless, we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer,
while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty
lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that
terrible tale can dispense, in English, with soft echoes at the end of
lines.

When locked I heard the nether door
Of the dread tower, I without speech
Into my children's faces looked:
Nor wept, so inly turned to stone.
They wept: and my dear Anselm said,
"Thou look'st so, father, what hast thou?"
Still I nor wept nor answer made
That whole day through, nor the next night,
Till a new sun rose on the world.
As in our doleful prison came
A little glimmer, and I saw
On faces four my own pale stare,
Both of my hands for grief I bit;
And they, thinking it was from wish
To eat, rose suddenly and said:
"Father, less shall we feel of pain
If them wilt eat of us: from thee
Came this poor flesh: take it again."
I calmed me then, not to grieve them.
The next two days we spake no word.
Oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope?
When we had come to the fourth day
Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet,
Saying, "Father, why dost not help me?"
There died he; and, as thou seest me,
I saw the three fall one by one
The fifth and sixth day; then I groped,
Now blind, o'er each; and two whole days
I called them after they were dead:
Then hunger did what grief could not.

V.

SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC.

A literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal
of opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, integrity with
indulgence, br