—P. L., 6. 380-5.
Take the whole, and it seems to me that the English is in imitation of the Italian. But great poets, when they imitate, they do so making the images their own; they don’t copy, but they abridge, add, and alter so as to appear original, and so does Milton. I find that he once translated one line Dante, at the beginning of the Paradiso, c. 1, v. 12, says:
‘Sarà ora materia del mio canto,’
And Milton, P. L., 3. 413:—
‘Shall be the copious matter of my song.’
And compare also what he says of the sun in that book (v. 586), with the very first lines of the Canto of Dante.
In his sonnet to Henry Lawes, Milton says:—
‘Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.’