first Cantos of Dante, which if far beneath the majestic simplicity of the original, is at least, for spirit as well as closeness, much above the mouthing nonentities which have been palmed upon us of late years for that wonderful poet. But Dante, to say nothing of his demands upon a variety of powers, in consequence of those varieties of his own, in which after shaking us with his terrors, or shocking us with his resentments and his diabolisms, he will enchant us with his grace, melt us with his tenderness, or refresh us with some exquisite picture of nature, is like all the other poets of the first class, scarcely translatable but by a kindred genius. The natural language they speak sets at nought the cant habit of books. You might as well endeavour, by the help of a fan, to gather round you the morning freshness of nature, as think of apprehending one of the great spirits of poetry, by means of these toyers in versification. Even the real poets among us have not done justice to those whom they translated, with the exception of some smaller pieces of lyric Dryden wants the gracefulness and the selectness of Virgil, Chapman all the music of Homer, and Pope all the nature what then are we to expect from such a writer as Francis, or from that prince of involuntary crambo, Hoole? No wonder that men of good sense and taste, who happen not to be scholars, have found Horace a dull fellow and Ariosto a dotard. The best translation, upon the whole, that has been produced in our language, both for closeness to the sense and sympathy with the spirit of its original, appears to me to be Fairfax's Tasso. I do not say that it is a perfect one, or that it is not sometimes straitened for want of room, and sometimes clouded with the obscurities of it's age; but Fairfax seems to go along with his author, and to be more of a piece with him, than any translator perhaps that has yet appeared. The versification is singularly free for it's closeness, and has always been accounted one of the earliest harmonizers of our poetry: Dryden calls him on this account the father of Waller, who indeed was not slow to confess the relationship; and Fairfax, in renewing his claims upon our attention, may boast that he has been praised by Collins, and imitated by Milton. The flowing versification of Fairfax has even drawn some writers into a love of him, who in other respects were not very seducible by the higher species of poetry. Among these is Hume, who compared a thing called Wilkie's Epigoniad to Virgil, and who was much inclined, in compliment to the rest of his French taste in literature, to call Shakspeare a barbarian.* Hume however is wrong when he says that each line" in Tasso "is faithfully rendered by a correspondent line in the translation." The faithfulness, it is true, is for the most part as surprising as he represents it, and the number of lines is the same in both poems; but Fairfax has occasionally substituted a line of his own for the sense of the original, sometimes, as may be supposed, with no good to his author, yet sometimes even * See the Appendix to the reign of James the First. with improvement, and the line has always something poetical in it, though it's taste may not be the true one. In the third book for instance, stanza 21st, where Tancred unknowingly encounters Clorindą, and knocks off her helmet, Fairfax says About her shoulders shone her golden locks, This is a splendid image; but Tasso merely says, with a more natural and momentary touch, that her golden locks were shaken out in the wind, and a young female appeared before him : E le chiome dorate al vento sparse, Giovane donna in mezzo 'l campo apparse. The conclusion of the succeeding stanza has also a turn with it unlike the original, and not in sq allowable a taste, though it's faultiness is Italian. But in other instances Fairfax can contend with his author, even at his best; as in that close of the 14th stanza, canto 1st, describing the descent of the angel Gabriel, who is represented by Tasso as first dropping his flight upon Lebanon, and balancing himself, as he lights, on equalized wings-su l adeguate penne Pria sul Libano monte ei si ritenne, E si libró su l' adeguate penne. This elegant imitation of Virgil, Fairfax improved into a thought as new as it was beautiful,— On Lebanon at first his foot he set, And shook his wings with rory may-dews wet. Milton, passing over the original in this passage, copies the translator, and that nothing may be lost, adds attitude to the motion from Virgil, and turns the due into fragrance from Sannazarius : Like Maia's son he stood, And shook his plumes, that heav'nly fragrance fill'd Book 5. But I am getting unawares into a luxurious gossiping, quite out of my subject. The chief purpose for which I mentioned Fairfax was to suggest a republication of him in preference to the commonplace dulness of Hoole, who would assuredly have never been tolerated, had not the last age of poetry, in which he lived, been given up to the lees of the |