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A Correspondent, in answer to T's Query respecting the Lines on a New-Born Infant, inserted at page 562 of our last Number, states, that they were translated from the Arabic by the Rev. Dr Carlyle. It is probable that Sir W. Jones may likewise have given a Translation of them.

We have received Mr Huddleston's communication, dated December 7, and shall give it a place in an early Number.

Serjeant Campbell's account of his Interview with the Emperor Alexander does not appear, in its present state, well adapted for our pages.

If C. B. will do us the favour to select the most striking passages from his Friend's Journal, we shall be happy to insert them. The specimen he has sent us, though not without interest, has too much unnecessary detail.

We take an "Old Correspondent's" remonstrances in very good part, and will do our best to please him; but "tempora mutantur," as he must well know.

Our Rothsay friend must have patience, His verses are by no means " well pleased if he would take to sober prose.

Idiotic," but we should be as

The Correspondents of the EDINBURGH MAGAZINE AND LITERARY MISCELLANY are respectfully requested to transmit their Communications for the Editors to ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE and COMPANY, Edinburgh, or LONGMAN and COMPANY, London, to whom also orders for the Work should be particularly addressed.

Printed by George Ramsay & Co.

THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

JANUARY 1819.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ON TANTE'S INFERNO. We owe some apology to our readers for having delayed so long the continuation of our remarks on this great and original poet. It is, perhaps, easier to offer a general criticism, than to illustrate it by particular examples; at least, we have always felt an apprehension of becoming tedious whenever we meditated a renewal of this subject, by a detailed exposition of the plan and conduct of the Divina Comedia. We shall not, therefore, be very ininute, particularly in our account of the Inferno, the division of Dante's poem which is both best known and most admired. For our own parts, we are not sure but that we like our poet best

when

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. We cannot, indeed, but bear the Inferno a little grudge, for the preju dice which it has been the main cause of supporting, that the genius of Dante is very little at home in the tenderer emotions, and that his ima gination is replete only with the most horrible conceptions. This prejudice has been well combated in a late very able article in the Edinburgh Review, -where many instances to the contrary are brought from the Inferno itself, and when we come to the Purgatorio, we think we shall be able to produce passages, of as deep and delicate a feeling, or of as resplendent and glorious a colouring, as are to be met with in the writings of any poet. In the mean time, we must

dive into the dark abysses of this powerful spirit,

Hail, horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell.

The poet represents himself as wandering through a dark and perplexed wood, and as in danger of being devoured by wild beasts, when a vener◄ able personage appears to him. This turns out to be the poet Virgil, who says, that he has been commissioned by a divine lady, Beatrice, with whom Dante had been in love, while she was on earth, to conduct him through all the scenes of punishment and of purification, till he brought him into her presence, when she would herself convey him through the re gions of glory. This visible representation of all that was to be dreaded and aspired after, was intended for the poet's eternal benefit, and he is so benevolent as to make the world acquainted with the precious revelation. Ôn being informed that it is Virgil who addresses him, Dante expresses his profound veneration for his great master in poetry.

"And art thou then that Virgil, that wellspring

From which such copious floods of clo quence

Have issued ?" I with front abash'd re

plied:

"Glory and light of all the tuneful train! May it avail me, that I long with zeal

Have sought thy volume, and with loya immense

Have conn'd it o'er. My master thon and guide!

Thou he from whoin alone I have deriv'd

That style, which for its beauty, into fame Exalts me."

We have sometimes wondered that Virgil, the character of whose genius was so unlike his own, should have been Dante's chief favourite. The truth is, Virgil seems to have been the poet who was held in highest and most general estimation at the revival of letters, and was, per haps, more an object of admiration then even than he is now. Homer was not so well known. The Eneid was the great source of those legends of the heroic ages which had already found their way into the wild romances of chivalry; and the very perfection of Virgil's composition must have appeared something miraculous and almost above human attainment, to writers who were emerging from barbarism, and struggling with the rudeness of unformed languages. Great power and energy are now the qualities which we are apt to admire most in poetry,--because we ourselves have gone as far in polish and refinement as we are capable of going,-and these qualities appear to us less imposing, than more vigorous though ruder exhibitions. In many respects, it is certainly impossible to place Virgil too high; but he excites in our minds little of that enthusiasm which seems to have been very sincerely felt for him, by men whom we are now inclined to rank as his superiors, it may be, in genius, but who appear with a most amiable humility, to have been powerfully impressed with the eminence of those qualifications in him which they found themselves incapable of reaching. The beauty of his style is what Dante chiefly lauds in the passage above quoted, as occasioning the "love immense" with which he "conned him o'er." The same feeling of humble yet ardent devotion appears in the preface with which our Scotch poet, Gawin Douglas, (a person of no common genius, with whom propose soon to make our readers better acquainted,) opens his noble translation of the Eneid:

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Laude, honoure, prasing thankis infinite To thee, and thi dulce ornate fresch endite, Maist reverend Virgil, of Latine poetis prince,

Gem of ingyne, and flude of cloquence;

In every volume quhilk thee list to write, Surmounting fer all uther maner endite:

Like as the rois in June with her sueite smell,

Quhy suld I than, with dull forhede and The marigulde or dasy doith excell.

vane,

With rude ingyne, and barane emptive brane,

With bad harsk speich, and lewit barbare toung

Presume to write quhare thy sucit bell is roung?

But to proceed with our narrative. Dante, following his guide through the wood, comes to a gate, the in scription on which has always been greatly admired, as remarkable for the awe and solemnity which it breathes. The mingled severity and harmony of the original are scarcely, however, to be traced in Mr Cary's version of this passage; and we may here remark in general, that it is seldom possible, without the use of rhyme, to render with effect those places which the poet has particularly laboured. There is a felicity in the rhyming closes, which gives a very poetical character to many passages in Dante, that, when translated into blank verse, approach, from the plainness and directness of the language, more nearly to prose, and any one acquainted with the original must often be sensible of this defect in Mr Cary's translation. The following is a very imperfect attempt to give a more accurate conception of this dread inscription:

Through me into the city sad of woe, Through me into the seat of endless pain, Through me among the damned folk you

go!

"Twas justice mov'd my builder to ordain, "Twas power divine, and wisdom nevez vain,

"Twas love itself, the mighty work did rear : Nothing but things eternal to remain, (And I too am eternal,) did appear Before me: quit all hope, O ye, who enter

here!

This, our readers will perceive, was the gate of hell; and it required all Virgil's words of good cheer to Mr Cary tempt our poet forward. will tell us very well what were the first sounds that met them on their entrance.

Here sighs with lamentations and loud

moans

Resounded through the air pierced by no star,

That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues,

Horrible languages, outcries of woe,

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both.

Speak not of them, but look and pass them by.

Our poets now came to the shore of a stream, over which they were ferried in Charon's boat, and then into a spacious plain, where there were numbers of people, suffering no torment, yet excluded from all hopes of heaven. These consisted chiefly of the virtuous among the Heathen; this was the place allotted to Virgil himself; and Dante has here the happiness of seeing some of the other illustrious fathers of poetry. When Virgil appeared, a voice was heard from the band of his compeers saying,

Honour the bard Sublime! his shade returns that left us late.

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No sooner ceased the sound, than I beheld Four mighty spirits toward us bend their

steps,

Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad.

These, Dante is informed, were Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. It is always interesting (there is never any thing offensive in it) to find a great poet sensible of his own enduring qualifications. The prophecies of immortality which we meet with in the higher poets of antiquity never strike ⚫ us as insolent assumptions; indeed, in their case, the prophecy has been long fulfilled. How fine, too, are the swelling hopes and internal gloryings

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And I was sixth amid so learned a band. We now come into Hell proper; and, before we advance farther, it may be advisable, once for all, to mention, that Dante's scheme of this region of punishment is of a very regular and mathematical construction. He supposes it to be literally an immense pit divided into a series of terraces along the interior, every lower one of which is of less dimensions than the upper. The poet descends from circle to circle, is most accurate in his account of each separately, and even, in some places, has dropt hints of the measurement of one or two of them, so as to enable his commentators, according to the admirable employment which commentators generally find for themselves, to measure the whole; and thus the number of square miles in every compartment of the infernal regions may be as accurately known as of any given district in Europe. This design has certainly cramped and cribbed to an amazing not a very poetical aspect, and seems degree, when contrasted with the grand scope which the genius of Milton has allowed itself in the same deseription. There can be no doubt, moreover, that a poet of a less dauntless spirit than Dante would at once have sunk under such a mass of heavy and cumbrous mason-work; but we are not at all prepared to say, that he has not turned into a beauty what in any other writer would have been an insuperable deformity. The regularity and symmetry of his Hell is, perhaps, necessary for a clear conception of the arrangement and gradation of his punishments; it tends, too, to produce the species of interest which he is most anxious to awaken, and which he does awaken to a degree that

is quite unequalled, that of a fixed concentration of mind, which never wanders beyond the walls in which he confines it, but is fastened, as by a spell, to the words and looks of the different phantasmagoria who are in turn presented to it.

In the circle to which he first comes, he finds the carnal sinners, and it is here that he introduces the beautiful episode of Francesca and her lover Paulo. The torment which they and their associates suffered was that of being borne along incessantly on a gust of wind. Francesca stops for a moment, and relates her story. We will not quote it, as it is so familiar to every one. Its effect upon our poet, who, in general, indeed, shows a most profound sensibility to the woes which he encounters, was so great, that he fell to the ground in a swoon, and, in the mean time, was conveyed into a still lower circle, where there were

Showers

Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged

For ever, both in kind and in degree. Large hail, discoloured water, sleety flaw, Through the dun midnight air streamed down amain;

Stunk all the land whereon that tempest fell.

This was the punishment to which the gluttonous and intemperate were subjected; they lay under this filthy sleet, had, moreover, the satisfaction of hearing the dog Cerberus bark ing and howling over them, and sometimes, for a little variety, were torn and flayed by his greedy fangs. Dante has a conversation with one of those gluttons, which, like most of the dialogues in the poem, relates to the affairs of Florence; and it is in this vehicle chiefly that the poet conveys the bitter invective and satire, which partly, indeed, relieve the uniformity of his descriptions, but more frequently, it must be owned, from the constant allusion to minute events in which we can take no interest, interrupt, in a tedious manner, the course of the narrative. There is something very striking in the description of this ghost's demeanour, on the conclusion of his speech. Like most of the unfortunate beings in this place of torment, the desire of being mamed on earth had not left him.

"But to the pleasant world when thou return'st,

19

of me make mention, I entreat thee, there. No more I tell thee, answer thee no more. This said, his fixed eyes he turned asA little eyed me, then bent down his head, kance, And 'midst his blind companions with it fell.

When thus my guide: No more his bed he leaves,

Ere the last angel-trumpet blow.

The next circle is that of the misers

and the prodigals, whose punishment it is to roll immense stones against each other, which, when they clash, they roll back again in the opposite direction, and so for ever repeat the same round. By a stroke of satire, he gives most of his misers a tonsure, so as to denote that they were churchmen.

Both popes and cardinals, o'er whom Av'rice dominion absolute maintains.

When they had passed through this circle, they came to the side of a flood. Intent I stood

To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks Betokening rage. They with their hands alone

Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,

Cutting each other piccemeal with their fangs.

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These were the victims of intemperate anger. Over this stream they are conveyed in a boat, which shoots out from the opposite shore on a signal being made by a light from a turret, at the base of which they were. corresponding light instantly appears at a distance, and immediately the boat arrives. The rapidity and life in all these little movements constantly occurring in the course of this poem, have a vast effect in keeping up its interest. The two poets are conveyed by the demon, who guides the boat, to the outskirts of a city; but the fiends who guarded its towers objected to the admittance of Dante, as he was not a spirit, but a living man; and all Virgil's remonstrances with them have no effect. fine machine is now introduced ;Virgil looks across the lake with great apparent anxiety and expectation,-the fiends upon the battlements grow bolder in their resistance, Dante is in violent alarm, when

A very

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