"My parents natives of Lombardy were."
"They'll come to blood and then the savage party."
"Like as at Palo near the Quarnãro."
"I am not Aeneas; I am not Paul."
We have exhibited sufficiently the merits of what its author declares to be "perhaps a better translation" than any other. He says that "the whole Divine Comedy of which these ten cantos are a specimen will appear in due time." If the specimen be a fair one, the translation of the "Purgatory" and the "Paradise" will not appear until after the publication of Dr. Carlyle's prose version, for which we may yet have to wait some time.
We are confident that so honorable a publishing house as that of Messrs. Ticknor and Fields must have been unaware of the character of a book so full of false pretences, when they allowed their name to be put on the title-page. But to make up for even unconscious participation in such a literary imposition, we trust that they will soon put to press the remainder of Dr. Parsons's excellent translation of Dante's poem, a specimen of which appeared so long since, bearing their imprint.
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City Poems. By ALEXANDER SMITH, Author of "A Life Drama, and other Poems." Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
On the first appearance of Alexander Smith, criticism became light-headed, and fairly exhausted its whole vocabulary of panegyric in giving him welcome. "There is not a page in this volume on which we cannot find some novel image, some Shakspearian felicity of expression, or some striking simile," said the critic of the "Westminster Review." "Having read these extracts," said another exponent of public opinion, "turn to any poet you will, and compare the texture of the composition,—it is a severe test, but you will find that Alexander Smith bears it well." It was observable, however, that all this praise was lavished on what were styled "beauties." Passages and single lines, bricks from the edifice, were extravagantly eulogized; but on turning to the poems, it was found that the poetical lines and passages were not parts of a whole, that the bricks formed no edifice at all. There were no indications of creative genius, no shaping or constructive power, no substance and fibre of individuality, no signs of a great poetical nature, but a splendid anarchy of sensations and faculties. The separate beauties, as the author had heaped and huddled them together, presented a total result of deformity. It was also found, that, striking as some of the images, metaphors, and similes were, they gave little poetic satisfaction or delight. A certain thinness of sentiment, poverty of idea, and shallowness of experience, were not hidden from view, to one who looked sharply through the gorgeous wrappings of words. A small, but sensitive and facile nature, capable of fully expressing itself by the grace of a singularly fluent fancy, with an appetite for beauty rather than a passion for it, with no essential imagination and opulence of soul,—this was the mortifying result to which we were conducted by analysis. Still, it was asserted that the luxuriance of the young poet's mind promised much; let a few years pass, and Tennyson and Browning and Elizabeth Barrett would be at his feet. A few years have passed, and here is his second volume. It has less richness of fancy than the first, but its merits and demerits are the same. The man has not yet grown into a poet,—has not yet learned that the foliage, flowers, and fruits of the mind should be connected with primal roots in its individual being. These are still tied on, in his old manner, to a succession of thoughts and emotions, which have themselves little vital connection with each other. The "hey-day in his blood," which gave an appearance of exulting and abounding life to his first poems, has somewhat subsided now, and the effect is, that "The City Poems," as a whole, are leaner in spirit, and more morbid and despondent in tone, than the "Life Drama." Yet there is still so much that is superficially striking in the volume, such a waste of imagery and emotion, and so many occasional lines and epithets of real power and beauty, that we close the volume with some vexation and pain at our inability to award it the praise which many readers will think it deserves.
* * * * *
FOREIGN.
Der Reichspostreiter in Ludwigsburg, Novelle auf geschichtlichem Hintergrunde. Von Robert Heller. 1858.
A very interesting novel indeed, sketching life at the little court of the Duke of Wurtemberg at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the overthrow of the government of a famous mistress of the Duke, the Countess Würben. The main points of interest in the story are historical, and the tissue of fiction interwoven with these is remarkably well arranged. Herr Heller belongs to the school of German novelists who, like Hermann Kurz, and others of minor mark, make a copious and comprehensive use of historical facts in Art. Their object and aim seem to be rather to illustrate and embody the historical facts in the flesh and blood of tangible reality, than merely to amuse by transforming history into a material for poetical entertainment. With all that, the abovenamed little volume is amply worth reading.