I am well aware that, socially speaking, Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know that I have brought him up badly, and that there is not an unmarried man or woman in the United States who wouldn't have brought him up very differently. It's a great pity that the only people who know how to manage children never have any! At the same time, Johnny is not a black sheep all over. He has some white spots. His sins—if wiser folks had no greater!—are the result of too much animal life. They belong to his evanescent youth, and will pass away; but his honesty, his generosity, his bravery, belong to his character, and are enduring qualities. The quickly crowding years will tame him. A good large pane of glass, or a seductive bell-knob, ceases in time to have attractions for the most reckless spirit. And I am quite confident that Johnny will be a great statesman, or a valorous soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen, after he has got over being A Young Desperado.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
The First Canticle [Inferno] of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra, and Company.
While we must own that we have no sympathy with the theory of free translation, we recognize the manifold merits of execution in this work, and accept it as one which, together with Mr. Longfellow's version of the whole of Dante's Divina Commedia, and Mr. Norton's translation of the Vita Nuova, will make the present year memorable in our literature. It does not necessarily stand in antagonism to works executed in a spirit entirely different, and we shall make no comparison of it with the "Inferno" by Mr. Longfellow, the admirers of which will be among the first to feel its characteristic and very striking excellences.
In substituting the decasyllabic quatrain for the triple rhyme of the Italian, we suppose Dr. Parsons desired rather to please the reader's ear with a familiar stanza, than to avoid the difficulties (exaggerated, we think, by critics) of the terza rima, and he could certainly have chosen no more felicitous form after once departing from that of his original. He has almost re-created the stanza for his purpose, giving it new movement, and successfully adapting to the exigencies of dialogue and of narrative what has hitherto chiefly been associated with elegiac and didactic poetry. Something of this may be seen in the following passages (from the description of the transit through the frozen circle of Caina), which moreover appear to us among the best sustained of the version.
"And as a frog squats croaking from a stream,
With nose put forth, what time the village maid
Oft in her slumber doth of gleaning dream,
Stood in the ice there every doleful shade.
Livid as far as where shame paints the cheek,
And doomed their faces downward still to hold.
Chattering like storks, their weeping eyes bespeak
Their aching hearts, their mouths the biting cold."
"A thousand visages I saw, by cold
Turned to dog-faces; horror chills me through
Whenever of those frozen fords I think.
And as we nearer to the centre drew,
Towards which all bodies by their weight must sink,
There, as I shivered in the eternal chill,
Trampling among the heads, it happed, by luck,
Or destiny—or, it may be, my will—
Hard in the face of one my foot I struck.
Weeping he cried, 'What brings thee bruising us?
Unless on me fresh vengeance thou wouldst pile
For Mont' Aperti, why torment me thus?'
And I: 'My Master, wait for me awhile,
That I through him may set one doubt at rest;
Then, if thou bid me hasten on, I will.'
My leader stopped; and I the shade addressed
Who kept full bitterly blaspheming still,
'Say, who art thou whose tongue so foully speaks?'
'Nay, who art thou that walk'st the withering air
Of Antemora, smiting others' cheeks
That, wert thou living, 't were too much to bear?'
'Living I am; and thou, if craving fame,
Mayst count it precious,'—this was my reply,—
'That I with other notes record thy name.'
He answered thus: 'Far other wish have I.
Trouble me now no longer,—get thee gone:
Thine is cold flattery in this waste of Hell.'
At this his hindmost hairs I fastened on,
And cried, 'Thy name! I'll force thee now to tell.
Or not one hair upon thy head shall grow.'
He answered thus: 'Although thou pluck me bare,
I'll neithertell my name, nor visage show;
Nay, though a thousand times thou rend my hair,'
"I held his tresses in my fingers wound,
And more than one tuft had I twitched away
As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a hound;
When one cried out, 'What ails thee, Bocca? say,—
Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws,
But thou must bark too! What fiend pricks thee now?'
'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause
To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou!
I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.'
'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate:
But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again,
Mention him too so ready with his prate."