"May she be early versed in wisdom's lore, And daily anxious to increase her store." Neither can we pass, without reprehension, the extreme inaccuracy in printing French, which often disgraces our press, though seldom to such a de gree as in this volume, where some very pretty verses on the death of Louis XVI. are scarcely to be understood from this cause. 8vo. Paris. may be called the fugitive pieces of the "Tendre mélancolie, Et méconnaît les charmes O sœur de la tendresse! ART. XXXI. Contes, &c. de SEGUR L'AINE. THE French, who in the higher walks of poetry are, by their own confession, inferior to many other nations, are excelled by none in the happy talent of saying light things with a grace and sprightliness which gives value to the most trifling production. They abound in ingenious turns of thought, in sentiment, in a happy choice of expression, and they know how, when they please, to suggest ideas of pleasure and gaiety, without the coarseness which less polished nations are apt to fall into. Voltaire, in his smaller pieces, Chaulieu, Favart, Le Chevalier de Bouflers, Bernis, and others, have given examples. of this kind of poetry, and the productions before us are not unworthy to be joined in the same class. Mr. Segur was ambassador from France, to the court of Petersburg, and has long been known for his political, as well as his literary talents. At Petersburg he had the honour of being associated with the late empress, in the composition of the Theatre de l'Hermitage de Catherine II. a kind of partnership in which the lion's share is generally found to belong, not to the sovereign, but to the associates. This volume consists of fables, tales, songs for a vaudeville society, les deux Genes, a drama, and a number of small poems on different occasions. Among the fables is a very ingenious one on Cupid's changing wings with the trade winds, and another entitled l'amour & le tems. Several are addressed to the author's wife, and do equal honour to the delicacy and tenderness of his sentiments, and to his conjugal affection. The drama is flat; and one of the tales, le Pistolet, might have been left out to advantage, as it resembles those of La Fontaine more in its licence than in its wit. The songs are light and gay, and have much variety, and if some of the pieces are trifling, others have that vein of philosophical sentiment which the French know so well how to mix in the Horatian manner, with the praises of love and wine. On the whole, this volume is a very agreeable addition to what Quand la belle Sylvie Qui lui servit d' aveu; D'un ruisseau le murmure, Sentiment doux et tendre, ART. XXXII. The Works of Thomas Chatterton. THE present is a complete edition of the works of Chatterton, including his forgeries, his acknowledged essays and poems, (a considerable number of which are here printed for the first time) and his correspondence. Dr. Gregory's life of this extraordinary, but most unprincipled youth, is prefixed: and the editor, (Mr. Southey) and Mr. Cottle, have contributed to the perfection of the publication, by various notes and judicious remarks. To all the admirers, or rather adorers of Chatterton, Mr. Southey has rendered a valuable service, by presenting them with a handsome and entire collection of the works of their favourite: he has also, in conjunction with the publishers, Mess. 8vo. 3 vols. pp. 500. 536. 537. Longman and Rees, secured to the family of the poet, in the person of his sister, an interest in those works "which have hitherto been published only for the emolument of strangers." We hope that his benevolent exertions will meet with abundant success. The best productions of the pen of Chatterton, are those that have blasted his moral character; we mean those which he endeavoured to pass upon the world, as having been written by Rowley: his satires and political pieces excite no interest, and are very faintly tinged with poetical colouring; nor do we think that the pieces which are pe culiar to this edition, will add greatly to the fame of the author. ART. XXXIII. The Divina Comedia of Dante Alighieri; consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Translated into English Verse, with preliminary Essays, Notes, and Illustrations. By the Rev. HENRY BOYD, A. M. Chaplain to the Right Ilon. the Lord Viscount Charleville. 8vo. 3 vols. pp. about 400 in each vol. THE Divina Comedia of Dante, is a poem, in our country at least, more admired than understood, more talked of than read. A few splendid passages are familiar to us; the well known fame of the author procures him an honourable place upon our shelves; but few, even among the admirers of Italian poetry, have fairly toiled through the number of cantos, not much short of an hundred, into which his work is divided. One principal reason of this, is his great obscurity. Though his poem is a wonderful effort of imagination, its interest is chiefly sustained by the satire which pervades it. He has done the same in verse, but with a larger licence, which Michael Angelo is said to have done in painting; and both his purgatory and his hell are filled with portraits. When a small state is agitated by contending factions, great virtues and great vices abound, and the spirit of party rages with peculiar violence. In such a period did Dante live; and every page of his work has a reference to characters then well known, and transactions then well remembered. But the petty wars of the Italian States are little known among us; and even of the long warfare be tween the Guelphs and Ghibelines, history has only preserved to us the great outline. Even of the men of letters of those times (though thanks to the la bours of Mr. Roscoe, and others, our acquaintance, with them is increasing,) we know much less than of the Greeks and Romans who lived so many centu ries before them. For these reasons Dante cannot now be read without the continual aid of explanatory notes; and feeble is the interest we take either in a panegyric or a satire, when we first become acquainted with the object of it in a note. Dante is also obscure from the allegorical nature of his poem, and the mixture of popular mythology with school divinity, which even in his own time required a comment; and it is well known, that his country paid him the singular honour of establishing a professor's chair at Florence, for the sole purpose of expounding his Divina Comedia. Under all these discouragements, it is not surprising that no one has till now, given an English dress to a poem, which, even in the Italian, might be suspected to want interest. Versions have, indeed, been given of particular parts; and Mr. Hayley has with good success translated three cantos of the Inferno; but a complete version seemed to have been considered as a task irksome in the execution, and hazardous as to the success. Still the fame of Danté stands so high, that we naturally wish to know what those merits are, which have secured him a place among the first class of poets. Curiosity may with many, supply the want of interest, and a laudable zeal for the literature of his country, leads an Englishman to wish that all the capital works of other nations may be naturalized into his own language. We hope therefore, Mr. Boyd will be found to have performed anacceptable service to the public, in the translation which he now presents to it. It is accompanied with valuable explanatory notes, a short life of the author taken from Hayley's notes, and preliminary essays, historical and critical, one to each volume. These latter are rambling, and contain many sentiments with which we cannot agree. We cannot agree with the translator, that the representations of Danté, coincide with the rational belief of the enlightened mind, no less than with the superstition of the vulgar; nor can we enter into his moral feelings when, in a comparison between Homer and Danté, he gives it as one reason of preference for the latter, that the resentment of Achilles is carried to such a savage excess, as prevents the reader from sympathising with him, and at the same time shews no repugnance to the views of the divine justice, exhibited in the horrible pictures of the Inferno. Mr. Boyd has an opinion on the purgatorio, which we cannot think in the least well founded, that the author meant to signify only the purifying punishments, and salutary trials of this world. The third essay is on Platonism; the ideas of Malbranche concerning the doctrine of seeing all things in God, and a dialogue from Plato's symposium on divine love; the whole illustrative of Dante's theological opinions. Indeed Mr. Boyd seems to have criticised his author rather as a theologian than as a poet, but, however many of these elucidations might have become the professor's chair at Florence, ANN. REV. VOL. I. we in this country must consider him chiefly in the light of a poet. We turn with more satisfaction to investigate the merits of Mr. Boyd, in his arduous task of a translator, in the execution of which he is entitled to great praise. His measure is a stanza of six lines, in which the first two make a couplet, the third and sixth, the fourth and fifth rhyme. It is more flowing and agreeable than the interminable rhyme which Hayley has adopted from Danté, and which obliged him, as he says, to translate line by line. This conciseness Mr. Boyd has not attempted, his version is somewhat diffuse, a couplet of the original is sometimes expanded to three or four lines; now and then we meet with an uncouth word, as elance. Suspense often occurs used adjectively, as, "Suspense I sought to shun the dubious war." But these blemishes, as well as some occasional obscurity, may well be pardoned in a work of such length and labour. As the original poem is but little read, it may be agreeable to our readers to follow the plan of it with some detail, through the medium of Mr. Boyd's translation. The whole of it passes in a kind of vision or trance. The author represents himself as in that period of his existence, "When life had laboured up her midmost stage, And, weary with her mortal pilgrimage, Stood in suspense upon the point of prime." He then finds himself in a deep glen, beset with fierce wild beasts, a panther, a lion and wolf, which guard the pass, and make it impossible for him to proceed. As he is in this dilemma, he is accosted by the shade of Virgil, who offers to shew him another path out of the valley, and advises him not to attempt combating the formidable monsters that oppose his passage. He further informs him, that he is commissioned by a saint in heaven, Beatrice, the object of Danté's affection while she was upon earth, (an affection probably of the same Platonic cast as that of Petrarch for his Laura) to invite him to a progress through the three regions of hell, purgatory, and heaven, which were all to be laid open to his view. By this allegory of the wild beasts, the poet probably meant to shadow out the political party that procured his banishment from France, and occasioned his quitting the management of public affairs, for the more retired pursuits of science and the muses. The Roman poet adds, that he is himself to be his guide through the two former regions, but not being able to enter heaven, as he had not the good fortune to be a christian, he is to be consigned to another conductor for that part of his gress. Danté expresses great affection and reverence towards the Mantuan bard, his poetical father, but is full of fears at the thoughts of so desperate an undertaking. Virgil endeavours to inspire him with courage, and leads the way, pro But works eternal; such was I ordain'd. Quit every hope all ye who enter here! These characters, where misty darkness reigned, High o'er a lofty gate I saw engraved.” thro' The first thing to be noticed is, that eleven lines in one, the number of the original, answer to fifteen of the other. The newly-damn'd is a harsh expression, savouring of vulgarity: Hayley has it, It is evident how me you pass. much both the translators wanted the impersonal pronoun, answering to the Italian si or the French on: to pain's eternal seat, is stronger, as well as nearer the Italian eterno dolore, than Mr. Hayley's, to scenes where grief must ever pine. On the other hand, the effect of the repe tition of per me, is much weakened in "Down that Cimmerian vale with horror Mr. Boyd's, by being interrupted by the hung." second line, and one repetition sup pressed: perduta is a stronger expression than tortured, for torture might have an end, but perduta suggests hopeless ruin; devoted train does not quite come up to it. In the three next lines, both translators depart from the construction of the original, in which the gate continues to speak in the first person; but Boyd seems to have the advantage in summing up the attributes; the third line gives the measure and end of punishment. Wisdom above controul, has no propriety; power is controuled, but not wisdom: all his fabrics rear, is a general assertion, and does not give the sense of fecimi, made me. The two next lines are obscure in the Italian; Mr. Hayley has been content with a literal translation, Mr. Boyd has attempted an explanatory one-and I for ever last, has a much better effect than such as I ordain'd; but in the next lines, the force is greatly weakened in Mr. Boyd, by being di "Long ere the infant world arose to light, I found a being in the womb of night. Eldest of all-but things that ever last!lated; so dreadful a sentence as the exAnd I for ever last!-Ye heirs of hell, Here bid at once your ling ring hope fare well, And mourn the moment of repentance past!" tinction of hope, could not strike more than by being told in the simplest words possible, and the Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate, leaves the mind under a soul harrowing impression, which is lost, we hardly know how, in Mr. Boyd's amplification. In the subsequent lines, the word gate or portal, would have been more appropriate than arch; a gate is the way to a place, an arch is not necessarily so. Having passed the gate, their way is along a steep descent, and the view of the infernal regions is spread before them. air; The lamentable strain of sad despair, After seeing the punishment of the indolent, and those spirits who stood neutral in the rebellion of Satan, in which it is probable the poet means to stigmatise those who took neither side in the divisions of his native country, they come to the limbo of the heathen world: here Danté finds the souls of sages, poets, and philosophers, many of whom are enumerated; and here, Virgil tells him, is his own appointed abode; these undergo no positive punishment, and are even in a sort of Elysium, though of a pensive and shadowy cast. Virgil introduces his protegé, who is received with great respect. Danté asks if none of the antient world were in heaven. Virgil replies, that soon after he himself was arrived in these regions, a victorious chief, crowned with palm, arrived there, and led away with him in triumph, a numerous host of patriarchs and prophets. The travellers then descend to the second region, where they find the tribunal of Minos. As fast as he condemns the prisoner, a dragon, which is coiled about the breast of the judge, darts out and carries him away to his place of punishment, graduated according to the degree of his crimes. The travellers then see a number of shades, whirled about in a continual hurricane; these are the votaries of guilty love: Danté is allowed to call any of them whose story he wishes to know. This canto concludes with the affect ing story of Paulo and Francesca, whose passion was raised to its height by their reading a romance together. They next see the votaries of Epicurism, stretched in heaps on the borders of the gulph, and exposed to storms of hail and snow. Then the misers and prodigals, the former of whom are employed in rolling up hill, masses of metal; the latter in rolling them down again on the heads of their antagonists. In the description of the horrors of the infernal regions, the poet has taken advantage of the furies, the Cerberus, and Stygian pool of the antients, as well as whatever the received mythology of the add to them; the variety of his punishtimes, and his own inventive fancy could ments is wonderful, and at once horrid and ludicrous. This invention was, no doubt, assisted by the dramatic representations in vogue at that time. We find, by a note on 26th canto, that "in the year 1304, scenical representations were already in high repute at Florence. A nocturnal spectacle of this sort, which represented the torments of the damned, was shown in a sort of wooden theatre on the river Arno. The concourse was so great, that the temporary wooden bridges gave way, and a vast multitude was drowned; and such was the mutual hatred of the two factions, that each exultingly remarked of those of the opposite party who were killed, that they had made a transition from a fancied, to a real scene of torment." To a people so prepared, the various scenes of punishment which Danté sets before them, must have given more pleasure than, it is to be hoped, the modern reader will receive from such a delineation, though he cannot but admire the fancy displayed in them. One set (the Heresiarchs) are each inclosed in a tomb of red hot metal; among these he finds the souls of a pope and of an emperor, the tombs open, and he converses with their inhabitants; another set are enwrapped in fiery flames, in such a manner that each seems a walking pyramid of fire; some have their heads twisted behind them, so that they walk one way and look another; some appear at a distance as if in shining armour, but on a nearer approach, they are found to be wrapped in robes of melted metal; some are plunged up to the shoulders in the burning lake, while their feet quiver and dance above; these are the Simonists. Pope Nicholas the third, who is one of them, addresses Danté, mistaking him for Boniface the eighth, come to take his place. come, "Shame of the papal chair, and art thou Who ruled the Christian world with iron rod, Come, thine eternal revenues behold!" He finds his mistake, but goes on to |