"My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by symptoms entirely different from the three first. In the former, my intellect had felt little of the fires of passion; but now my heart and my genius were both equally kindled, and if my passion was less impetuous, it became more profound and lasting. Such was the flame which by degrees absorbed every affection and thought of my being, and it will never fade away except with my life. Two months satisfied me that I had now found the true woman; for, instead of encountering in her, as in all common women, an obstacle to literary glory, a hinderance to useful occupations, and a damper to thought, she proved a high stimulus, a pure solace, and an alluring example to every beautiful work. Prizing a treasure so rare, I gave myself away to her irrevocably. And I certainly erred not. More than twelve years have passed, and while I am writing this chit-chat, having reached that calm season when passion loses its blandishments, I cherish her more tenderly than ever; and I love her just in proportion as glide from her in the lapse of time those little-esteemed toll-gatherers of departing beauty. In her my soul is exalted, softened, and made better day by day; and I will dare to say and believe she has found in me support and consolation."
We have spoken of the peculiarities in Alfieri's physical condition. These naturally led him to seek solace in violent exercise; and as in the case of Beckford and Byron, horses were his best friends in the hour of danger. This sort of man is the modern Achilles, "the tamer of horses." In what degree the health of Alfieri was improved, and his sympathies awakened by the society and care of these noble animals, is very evident. Almost all persons, perhaps all that are in a natural state, need to stand in patriarchal relations with the animals most correspondent with their character. We have the highest respect for this instinct and sincere belief in the good it brings; if understood, it would be cherished, not ridiculed.
ITALY.—CARY'S DANTE.
TRANSLATING Dante is indeed a labor of love. It is one in which even a moderate degree of success is impossible. No great Poet can be well translated. The form of his thought is inseparable from his thought. The births of his genius are perfect beings: body and soul are in such perfect harmony that you cannot at all alter the one without veiling the other. The variation in cadence and modulation, even where the words are exactly rendered, takes not only from the form of the thought, but from the thought itself, its most delicate charm. Translations come to us as a message to the lover from the lady of his love through the lips of a confidante or menial—we are obliged to imagine what was most vital in the utterance.
These difficulties, always insuperable, are accumulated a hundred-fold in the case of Dante, both by the extraordinary depth and subtlety of his thought, and his no less extraordinary power of concentrating its expression, till every verse is like a blade of thoroughly tempered steel. You might as well attempt to translate a glance of fire from the human eye into any other language—even music cannot do that.
We think, then, that the use of Cary's translation, or any other, can never be to diffuse a knowledge of Dante. This is not in its nature diffusible; he is one of those to whom others must draw near; he cannot be brought to them. He has no superficial charm to cheat the reader into a belief that he knows him, without entrance into the same sphere.
These translations can be of use only to the translators, as a means of deliberate study of the original, or to others who are studying the original, and wish to compare their own version of doubtful passages with that of an older disciple, highly qualified, both by devotion and mental development, for the study.
We must say a few words as to the pedantic folly with which this study has been prosecuted in this country, and, we believe, in England. Not only the tragedies of Alfieri and the Faust of Goethe, but the Divina Commedia of Dante,—a work which it is not probable there are upon earth, at any one time, a hundred minds able to appreciate,—are turned into school books for little girls who have just left their hoops and dolls, and boys whose highest ambition it is to ride a horse that will run away, and brave the tutor in a college frolic.
This is done from the idea that, in order to get acquainted with a foreign language, the student must read books that have attained the dignity of classics, and also which are "hard." Hard indeed it must be for the Muses to see their lyres turned into gridirons for the preparation of a school-girl's lunch; harder still for the younglings to be called to chew and digest thunderbolts, in lieu of their natural bread and butter.
Are there not "classics" enough which would not suffer by being put to such uses? In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy; must you give him Plato because it is harder? Is there no choice among the Latins? Are all who wrote in the Latin tongue equally fit for the appreciation of sixteen Yankee years? In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante? Indeed, they are saved from suffering by the perfect ignorance of all meaning in which they leave these great authors, fancying, to their life-long misfortune, that they have read them. I have been reminded, by the remarks of my young friends on these subjects, of the Irish peasant, who, having been educated on a book prepared for his use, called "Reading made easy," blesses through life the kindness that taught him his "Radamadasy;" and of the child who, hearing her father quote Horace, observed she "thought Latin was even sillier than French."