Chapter X: Part 10

"Art thou that Virgil and that fountain,
then, which pours abroad so rich a stream of
speech? With bashful forehead him I gave
reply. O light and glory of the other bards!
May the long zeal and the great love avail me
that hath caused me thy volume to explore.
Thou art my master, thou my author art."

Opening again at random, we take the two translations at the beginning of the Eighth Canto.

CARLYLE.

"I say, continuing, that long before we
reached the foot of the high tower our eyes
went upward to the summit, because of two
flamelets that we saw put there; and another
from far gave signal back,--so far that the
eye could scarcely catch it. And I, turning
to the Sea of all knowledge, said: What says
this? and what replies yon other light? And
who are they that made it?"

PEABODY.

"I say, continuing, that long before unto
the foot of that high tower we came, our eyes
unto its summit upward went, cause of two
flamelets that we saw there placed; while
signal back another gave from far; so far the
eye a glimpse could hardly catch. Then I to
the Sea of all wisdom turned, and said: What
sayeth this and what replies that other fire?
And who are they that made it?"

We open again in Cantos Nine and Ten, and find a like resemblance between Dr. Carlyle's prose and Mr. Peabody's metre; but we have perhaps quoted enough to enable our readers to form a just idea of the latter person's "labor and plodding." It is not, however, in the text alone that the resemblance exists. J. C. Peabody's notes bear a striking conformity to Dr. Carlyle's. There are fourteen notes to the Second Canto in Mr. Peabody's book,--_all_ taken, with more or less unimportant alteration and addition, from Dr. Carlyle, without acknowledgment. Of the twelve notes to Canto Eight, nine are, with little change, from Dr. Carlyle. We have compared no farther; _ex uno omnes_. Now and then Mr. Peabody gives us a note of his own. In the First Canto, for instance; he explains the allegorical greyhound as "A looked for reformer. 'The Coming Man.'" The appropriateness and elegance of which commentary will be manifest to all readers familiar with the allusion. In the Fourth Canto, where Virgil speaks of the condition of the souls in limbo, our professed translator says: "Dante says this in bitter irony. He ill brooks the narrow bigotry of the Church," etc. etc., showing an utter ignorance of Dante's real adherence to the doctrine of the Church. He has here read Dr. Carlyle's note with less attention than usual; for a quotation contained in it from the "De Monarchià" would have set him right. The quotation is, however, in Latin, and though Mr. Peabody has transferred many quotations from the "Aeneid" (through Dr. Carlyle) to his own notes, they are often so printed as not to impress one with a strong sense of his familiarity with the Latin language. We give one instance for the sake of illustration. On page 40 appear the following lines:--

Terribili squarlore Charon eni plurina mento
Canities inculta jucet; staut lumina flaurina

Nor is he happier in his quotations from Italian, or in his other displays of learning. Having occasion to quote one of Dante's most familiar lines, he gives it in this way:--

Lasciatte ogni speranzi, voi ch'entrate.

Anacreon is with him "Anachreon"; Vallombrosa is "Vallambroso"; Aristotelian is "Aristotleian." Five times (all the instances in which the name occurs) the Ghibelline appears as the "Ghiberlines"; and Montaperti is transformed into "Montapesti."

Nor is J.C. Peabody's poetic capacity superior to his honesty or his learning; witness such lines as these:--

"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.

* * * * *

_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.

_Une Eté dans le Sahara_, par Eugene Fromentin. Paris. 1857.

A painter describes here a summer journey through the Desert of Sahara, as far south from Algiers as El Aghouat, in the year 1853. There is not much that is new in this book, considering the many later and far more comprehensive and extensive illustrations of life in the Great Desert, since published by Bayard Taylor, Barth, and others; but it is a very interesting picture of this life, as seen and drawn by a painter. His descriptions contain many landscape and _genre_ pictures, by means of which a vivid idea of the scenery and life are conveyed to the imagination of the reader.