"Ill! of course she's ill!" cried Richard, passionately. "She's dying,—she's consuming herself! I know I seem to be playing an odious part here, Gertrude, but, upon my soul, I can't help it. I look like a betrayer, an informer, a sneak, but I don't feel like one! Still, I'll leave you, if you say so."

"Shall he go, Gertrude?" asked Luttrel, without looking at Richard.

"No. Let him stay and explain himself. He has accused you,—let him prove his case."

"I know what he is going to say," said Luttrel. "It will place me in a bad light. Do you still wish to hear it?"

Gertrude drew her hand hastily out of Luttrel's. "Speak, Richard!" she cried, with a passionate gesture.

"I will speak," said Richard. "I've done you a dreadful wrong, Gertrude. How great a wrong, I never knew until I saw you to-day so miserably altered. When I heard that you were to be married, I fancied that it was no wrong, and that my remorse had been wasted. But I understand it now; and he understands it, too. You once told me that you had ceased to love Captain Severn. It wasn't true. You never ceased to love him. You love him at this moment. If he were to get another wound in the next battle, how would you feel? How would you bear it?" And Richard paused for an instant with the force of his interrogation.

"For God's sake," cried Gertrude, "respect the dead!"

"The dead! Is he dead?"

Gertrude covered her face with her hands.

"You beast!" cried Luttrel.

Richard turned upon him savagely. "Shut your infernal mouth!" he roared. "You told me he was alive and well!"

Gertrude made a movement of speechless distress.

"You would have it, my dear," said Luttrel, with a little bow.

Richard had turned pale, and began to tremble. "Excuse me, Gertrude," he said, hoarsely, "I've been deceived. Poor, unhappy woman! Gertrude," he continued, going nearer to her, and speaking in a whisper, "I killed him."

Gertrude fell back from him, as he approached her, with a look of unutterable horror. "I and he," said Richard, pointing at Luttrel.

Gertrude's eyes followed the direction of his gesture, and transferred their scorching disgust to her suitor. This was too much for Luttrel's courage. "You idiot!" she shouted at Richard, "speak out!"

"He loved you, though you believed he didn't," said Richard. "I saw it the first time I looked at him. To every one but you it was as plain as day. Luttrel saw it too. But he was too modest, and he never fancied you cared for him. The night before he went back to the army, he came to bid you good by. If he had seen you, it would have been better for every one. You remember that evening, of course. We met him, Luttrel and I. He was all on fire,—he meant to speak. I knew it, you knew it, Luttrel: it was in his fingers' ends. I intercepted him. I turned him off,—I lied to him and told him you were away. I was a coward, and I did neither more nor less than that. I knew you were waiting for him. It was stronger than my will,—I believe I should do it again. Fate was against him, and he went off. I came back to tell you, but my damnable jealousy strangled me. I went home and drank myself into a fever. I've done you a wrong that I can never repair. I'd go hang myself if I thought it would help you." Richard spoke slowly, softly, and explicitly, as if irresistible Justice in person had her hand upon his neck, and were forcing him down upon his knees. In the presence of Gertrude's dismay nothing seemed possible but perfect self-conviction. In Luttrel's attitude, as he stood with his head erect, his arms folded, and his cold gray eye fixed upon the distance, it struck him that there was something atrociously insolent; not insolent to him,—for that he cared little enough,—but insolent to Gertrude and to the dreadful solemnity of the hour. Richard sent the Major a look of the most aggressive contempt. "As for Major Luttrel," he said, "he was but a passive spectator. No, Gertrude, by Heaven!" he burst out; "he was worse than I! I loved you, and he didn't!"

"Our friend is correct in his facts, Gertrude," said Luttrel, quietly. "He is incorrect in his opinions. I was a passive spectator of his deception. He appeared to enjoy a certain authority with regard to your wishes,—the source of which I respected both of you sufficiently never to question,—and I accepted the act which he has described as an exercise of it. You will remember that you had sent us away on the ground that you were in no humor for company. To deny you, therefore, to another visitor, seemed to me rather officious, but still pardonable. You will consider that I was wholly ignorant of your relations to that visitor; that whatever you may have done for others, Gertrude, to me you never vouchsafed a word of information on the subject, and that Mr. Clare's words are a revelation to me. But I am bound to believe nothing that he says. I am bound to believe that I have injured you only when I hear it from your own lips."

Richard made a movement as if to break out upon the Major; but Gertrude, who had been standing motionless with her eyes upon the ground, quickly raised them, and gave him a look of imperious prohibition. She had listened, and she had chosen. She turned to Luttrel. "Major Luttrel," she said, "you have been an accessory in what has been for me a serious grief. It is my duty to tell you so. I mean, of course, a profoundly unwilling accessory. I pity you more than I can tell you. I think your position more pitiable than mine. It is true that I never made a confidant of you. I never made one of Richard. I had a secret, and he surprised it. You were less fortunate." It might have seemed to a thoroughly dispassionate observer that in these last four words there was an infinitesimal touch of tragic irony. Gertrude paused a moment while Luttrel eyed her intently, and Richard, from a somewhat tardy instinct of delicacy, walked over to the bow-window. "This is the most painful moment of my life," she resumed. "I hardly know where my duty lies. The only thing that is plain to me is, that I must ask you to release me from my engagement. I ask it most humbly, Major Luttrel," Gertrude continued, with warmth in her words, and a chilling coldness in her voice,—a coldness which it sickened her to feel there, but which she was unable to dispel. "I can't expect that you should give me up easily; I know that it's a great deal to ask, and"—she forced the chosen words out of her mouth—"I should thank you more than I can say if you would put some condition upon my release. You have done honorably by me, and I repay you with ingratitude. But I can't marry you." Her voice began to melt. "I have been false from the beginning. I have no heart to give you. I should make you a despicable wife."

The Major, too, had listened and chosen, and in this trying conjuncture he set the seal to his character as an accomplished man. He saw that Gertrude's movement was final, and he determined to respect the inscrutable mystery of her heart. He read in the glance of her eye and the tone of her voice that the perfect dignity had fallen from his character,—that his integrity had lost its bloom; but he also read her firm resolve never to admit this fact to her own mind, nor to declare it to the world, and he honored her forbearance. His hopes, his ambitions, his visions, lay before him like a colossal heap of broken glass; but he would be as graceful as she was. She had divined him; but she had spared him. The Major was inspired.

"You have at least spoken to the point," he said. "You leave no room for doubt or for hope. With the little light I have, I can't say I understand your feelings, but I yield to them religiously. I believe so thoroughly that you suffer from the thought of what you ask of me, that I will not increase your suffering by assuring you of my own. I care for nothing but your happiness. You have lost it, and I give you mine to replace it. And although it's a simple thing to say," he added, "I must say simply that I thank you for your implicit faith in my integrity,"—and he held out his hand. As she gave him hers, Gertrude felt utterly in the wrong; and she looked into his eyes with an expression so humble, so appealing, so grateful, that, after all, his exit may be called triumphant.

When he had gone, Richard turned from the window with an enormous sense of relief. He had heard Gertrude's speech, and he knew that perfect justice had not been done; but still there was enough to be thankful for. Yet now that his duty was accomplished, he was conscious of a sudden lassitude. Mechanically he looked at Gertrude, and almost mechanically he came towards her. She, on her side, looking at him as he walked slowly down the long room, his face indistinct against the deadened light of the white-draped windows behind him, marked the expression of his figure with another pang. "He has rescued me," she said to herself; "but his passion has perished in the tumult. Richard," she said aloud, uttering the first words of vague kindness that came into her mind, "I forgive you."

Richard stopped. The idea had lost its charm. "You're very kind," he said, wearily. "You're far too kind. How do you know you forgive me? Wait and see."

Gertrude looked at him as she had never looked before; but he saw nothing of it. He saw a sad, plain girl in a white dress, nervously handling her fan. He was thinking of himself. If he had been thinking of her, he would have read in her lingering, upward gaze, that he had won her; and if, so reading, he had opened his arms, Gertrude would have come to them. We trust the reader is not shocked. She neither hated him nor despised him, as she ought doubtless in consistency to have done. She felt that he was abundantly a man, and she loved him. Richard on his side felt humbly the same truth, and he began to respect himself. The past had closed abruptly behind him, and tardy Gertrude had been shut in. The future was dimly shaping itself without her image. So he did not open his arms.

"Good by," he said, holding out his hand. "I may not see you again for a long time."

Gertrude felt as if the world were deserting her. "Are you going away?" she asked, tremulously.

"I mean to sell out and pay my debts, and go to the war."

She gave him her hand, and he silently shook it. There was no contending with the war, and she gave him up.

With their separation our story properly ends, and to say more would be to begin a new story. It is perhaps our duty, however, expressly to add, that Major Luttrel, in obedience to a logic of his own, abstained from revenge; and that, if time has not avenged him, it has at least rewarded him. General Luttrel, who lost an arm before the war was over, recently married Miss Van Winkel of Philadelphia, and seventy thousand a year. Richard engaged in the defence of his country, on a captain's commission, obtained with some difficulty. He saw a great deal of fighting, but he has no scars to show. The return of peace found him in his native place, without a home, and without resources. One of his first acts was to call dutifully and respectfully upon Miss Whittaker, whose circle of acquaintance had apparently become very much enlarged, and now included a vast number of gentlemen. Gertrude's manner was kindness itself, but a more studied kindness than before. She had lost much of her youth and her simplicity. Richard wondered whether she had pledged herself to spinsterhood, but of course he didn't ask her. She inquired very particularly into his material prospects and intentions, and offered most urgently to lend him money, which he declined to borrow. When he left her, he took a long walk through her place and beside the river, and, wandering back to the days when he had yearned for her love, assured himself that no woman would ever again be to him what she had been. During his stay in this neighborhood he found himself impelled to a species of submission to one of the old agricultural magnates whom he had insulted in his unregenerate days, and through whom he was glad to obtain some momentary employment. But his present position is very distasteful to him, and he is eager to try his fortunes in the West. As yet, however, he has lacked even the means to get as far as St. Louis. He drinks no more than is good for him. To speak of Gertrude's impressions of Richard would lead us quite too far. Shortly after his return she broke up her household, and came to the bold resolution (bold, that is, for a woman young, unmarried, and ignorant of manners in her own country) to spend some time in Europe. At our last accounts she was living in the ancient city of Florence. Her great wealth, of which she was wont to complain that it excluded her from human sympathy, now affords her a most efficient protection. She passes among her fellow-countrymen abroad for a very independent, but a very happy woman; although, as she is by this time twenty-seven years of age, a little romance is occasionally invoked to account for her continued celibacy.



THE GROWTH, LIMITATIONS, AND TOLERATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS.

In an article on Shakespeare in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little pretension to system in the order of taking them up.

The first of these topics is the succession of Shakespeare's works, considered as steps in the growth and development of his powers,—a subject which has already been ably handled by our countryman, Mr. Verplanck. The facts, as far as they can be ascertained, are these. Shakespeare went to London about the year 1586, in his twenty-second year, and found some humble employment in one of the theatrical companies. Three years afterwards, in 1589, he had risen to be one of the sharers in the Blackfriars' Theatre. In 1592 he had acquired sufficient reputation as a dramatist, or at least as a recaster of the plays of others, to excite the jealousy of the leading playwrights, whose crude dramas he condescended to rewrite or retouch. That graceless vagabond, Robert Greene, addressing from his penitent death-bed his old friends Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe, and trying to dissuade them from "spending their wits" any longer in "making plays," spitefully declares: "There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country." Doubtless this charge of adopting and adapting the productions of others includes some dramas which have not been preserved, as the company to which Shakespeare was attached owned the manuscripts of a great number of plays which were never printed; and it was a custom, when a play had popular elements in it, for other dramatists to be employed in making such additions as would give continual novelty to the old favorite. But of the plays published in our editions of Shakespeare's writings, it is probable that "The Comedy of Errors," and the three parts of "King Henry VI.," are only partially his, and should be classed among his early adaptations, and not among his early creations. The play of "Pericles" bears no marks of his mind, except in some scenes of transcendent power and beauty, which start up from the rest of the work like towers of gold from a plain of sand; but these scenes are in his latest manner. In regard to the tragedy of "Titus Andronicus," we are so constituted as to resist all the external evidence by which such a shapeless mass of horrors and absurdities is fastened on Shakespeare. Mr. Verplanck thinks it one of Shakespeare's first attempts at dramatic composition; but first attempts must reflect the mental condition of the author at the time they were made; and we know the mental condition of Shakespeare in his early manhood by his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he expressly styles "the first heir of his invention." Now leaving out of view the fact that "Titus Andronicus" stamps the impression, not of youthful, but of matured depravity of taste, its execrable enormities of feeling and incident could not have proceeded from the sweet and comely nature in which the poem had its birth. The best criticism on "Titus Andronicus" was made by Robert Burns, when he was nine years old. His schoolmaster was reading the play aloud in his father's cottage, and when he came to the scene where Lavinia enters with her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, little Robert fell a-crying, and threatened, in case the play was left in the cottage, to burn it. It is hard to believe that what Burns despised and detested at the age of nine could have been written by Shakespeare at the age of twenty-five. Taking, then, "Venus and Adonis" as the point of departure, we find Shakespeare at the age of twenty-two endowed with all the faculties, but relatively deficient in the passions, of the poet. The poem is a throng of thoughts, fancies, and imaginations, but somewhat cramped in the utterance. Coleridge says, that "in his poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other." Fine as this is, it would perhaps be more exact to say, that in his earlier poems his intellect, acting apart from his sensibility, and playing with its own ingenuities of fancy and meditation, condensed its thoughts in crystals. Afterwards, when his whole nature became liquid, he gave us his thoughts in a state of fusion, and his intellect flowed in streams of fire.

Take, for example, that passage in the poem where Venus represents the loveliness of Adonis as sending thrills of passion into the earth on which he treads, and as making the bashful moon hide herself from the sight of his bewildering beauty:—

"But if thou fall, O, then imagine this! The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips, And all is but to rob thee of a kiss. Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn, Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.

"Now of this dark night I perceive the reason: Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine, Till forging Nature be condemned of treason, For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine. Wherein she framed thee, in high heaven's despite. To shame the sun by day and her by night."

This is reflected and reflecting passion, or, at least, imagination awakening passion, rather than passion penetrating imagination.

Now mark, by contrast, the gush of the heart into the brain, dissolving thought, imagination, and expression, so that they run molten, in the delirious ecstasy of Pericles in recovering his long-lost child:—

"O Helicanus, strike me, honored sir! Give me a gash; put me to present pain; Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me, O'erbear the shores of my mortality, And drown me with their sweetness."

If, as is probable, "Venus and Adonis" was written as early as 1586, we may suppose that the plays which represent the boyhood of his genius, and which are strongly marked with the characteristics of that poem, namely, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," the first draft of "Love's Labor's Lost," and the original "Romeo and Juliet," were produced before the year 1592. Following these came "King Richard III.," "King Richard II.," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "King John," "The Merchant of Venice," and "King Henry IV.," all of which we know were written before 1598, when Shakespeare was in his thirty-fourth year. During the next eight years he produced "King Henry V.," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "As You Like It," "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night," "Measure for Measure," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "King Lear." In this list are the four great tragedies in which his genius culminated. Then came "Troilus and Cressida," "Timon of Athens," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Cymbeline," "King Henry VIII.," "The Tempest," "The Winter's Tale," and "Coriolanus." If heed be paid to this order of the plays, it will be seen at once that a quotation from Shakespeare carries with it a very different degree of authority, according as it refers to the youth or the maturity of his mind.

Indeed, when we reflect that between the production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "King Lear" there is only a space of fifteen years, we must admit that the history of the human intellect presents no other example of such marvellous progress; and if we note the giant strides by which it was made, we shall find that they all imply a progressive widening and deepening of soul, a positive growth of the nature of the man, until in Lear the power became supreme and becomes amazing. Mr. Verplanck considers the period when he produced his four great tragedies to be the period of his intellectual grandeur, as distinguished from an earlier period which he thinks shows the perfection of his merely poetic and imaginative power; but the fact would seem to be that his increasing greatness as a philosopher was fully matched by his increasing greatness as a poet, and that in the devouring swiftness of his onward and upward movement imagination kept abreast of reason. His imagination was never more vivid, all-informing, and creative,—never penetrated with more unerring certainty to the inmost spiritual essence of whatever it touched,—never forced words and rhythm into more supple instruments of thought and feeling,—than when it miracled into form the terror and pity and beauty of Lear.

Indeed, the coequal growth of his reason and imagination was owing to the wider scope and increased energy of the great moving forces of his being. It relates primarily to the heart rather than the head. It is the immense fiery force behind his mental powers, kindling them into white heat, and urging them to efforts almost preternatural,—it is this which impels the daring thought beyond the limits of positive knowledge, and prompts the starts of ecstasy in whose unexpected radiance nature and human life are transfigured, and for an instant shine with celestial light. In truth he is, relatively, more intellectual in his early than in his later plays, for in his later plays his intellect is thoroughly impassioned, and, though it has really grown in strength and massiveness, it is so fused with imagination and emotion as to be less independently prominent.

The sources of individuality lie below the intellect; and as Shakespeare went deeper into the soul of man, he more and more represented the brain as the organ and instrument of the heart, as the channel through which sentiment, passion, and character found an intelligible outlet. His own mind was singularly objective; that is, he saw things as they are in themselves. The minds of his prominent characters are all subjective, and see things as they are modified by the peculiarities of their individual moods and emotions. The very objectivity of his own mind enables him to assume the subjective conditions of less-emancipated natures. Macbeth peoples the innocent air with menacing shapes, projected from his own fiend-haunted imagination; but the same air is "sweet and wholesome" to the poet who gave being to Macbeth. The meridian of Shakespeare's power was reached when he created Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, complex personalities, representing the conflict and complication of the mightiest passions in colossal forms of human character, and whose understandings and imaginations, whose perceptions of nature and human life, and whose weightiest utterances of moral wisdom, are all thoroughly subjective and individualized. The greatness of these characters, as compared with his earlier creations, consists in the greater intensity and amplitude of their natures, and the wider variety of faculties and passions included in the strict unity of their natures. Richard III., for example, is one of his earlier characters, and though excellent of its kind, its excellence has been approached by other dramatists, as, for instance, Massinger, in "Sir Giles Overreach." But no other dramatist has been able to grasp and represent a character similar in kind to Macbeth, and the reason is that Richard is comparatively a simple conception, while Macbeth is a complex one. There is unity and versatility in Richard; there is unity and variety in Macbeth. Richard is capable of being developed with almost logical accuracy; for though there is versatility in the play of his intellect, there is little variety in the motives which direct his intellect. His wickedness is not exhibited in the making. He is so completely and gleefully a villain from the first, that he is not restrained from convenient crime by any scruples and relentings. The vigor of his will is due to his poverty of feeling and conscience. He is a brilliant and efficient criminal because he is shorn of the noblest attributes of man. Put, if you could, Macbeth's heart and imagination into him, and his will would be smitten with impotence, and his wit be turned to wailing. The intellect of Macbeth is richer and grander than Richard's, yet Richard is relatively a more intellectual character; for the intellect of Macbeth is rooted in his moral nature, and is secondary in our thoughts to the contending motives and emotions it obeys and reveals. In crime, as in virtue, what a man overcomes should enter into our estimate of the power exhibited in what he does.

The question now comes up,—and we suppose it must be met, though we should like to evade it,—How, amid the individualities that Shakespeare has created, are we to detect the individuality of Shakespeare himself? In answer it may be said, that, if we survey his dramas in the mass, we find three degrees of unity;—first, the unity of the individual characters; second, the unity of the separate plays in which they appear; and third, the unity of Shakespeare's own nature, a nature which deepened, expanded, and increased in might, but did not essentially change, and which is felt as a potent presence throughout his works, binding them together as the product of one mind. He did not go out of himself to inform other natures, but he included these natures in himself; and though he does not infuse his individuality into his characters, he does infuse it into the general conceptions which the characters illustrate. His opinions, purposes, theory of life, are to be gathered, not from what his characters say and do, but from the results of what they say and do; and in each play he so combines and disposes the events and persons that the cumulative impression shall express his own judgment, indicate his own design, and convey his own feeling. His individuality is so vast, so purified from eccentricity, and we grasp it so imperfectly, that we are apt to deny it altogether, and conceive his mind as impersonal. In view of the multiplicity of his creations, and the range of thought, emotion, and character they include, it is a common hyperbole of criticism to designate him as universal. But, in truth, his mind was restricted, in its creative action, like other minds, within the limits of its personal sympathies, though these sympathies in him were keener, quicker, and more general than in other men of genius. He was a great-hearted, broad-brained person, but still a person, and not what Coleridge calls him, an "omnipresent creativeness." Whatever he could sympathize with, he could embody and vitally represent; but his sympathies, though wide, were far from being universal, and when he was indifferent or hostile, the dramatist was partially suspended in the satirist and caricaturist, and oversight took the place of insight. Indeed, his limitations are more easily indicated than his enlargements. We know what he has not done more surely than we know what he has done; for if we attempt to follow his genius in any of the numerous lines of direction along which it sweeps with such victorious ease, we soon come to the end of our tether, and are confused with a throng of thoughts and imaginations, which, as Emerson exquisitely says, "sweetly torment us with invitations to their own inaccessible homes." But there were some directions which his genius did not take,—not so much from lack of mental power as from lack of disposition or from positive antipathy. Let us consider some of these.

And first, Shakespeare's religious instincts and sentiments were comparatively weak, for they were not creative. He has exercised his genius in the creation of no character in which religious sentiment or religious passion is dominant. He could not, of course,—he, the poet of feudalism,—overlook religion as an element of the social organization of Europe, but he did not seize Christian ideas in their essence, or look at the human soul in its direct relations with God. And just think of the field of humanity closed to him! For sixteen hundred years, remarkable men and women had appeared, representing all classes of religious character, from the ecstasy of the saint to the gloom of the fanatic; yet his intellectual curiosity was not enough excited to explore and reproduce their experience. Do you say that the subject was foreign to the purpose of an Elizabethan playwright? The answer is, that Decker and Massinger attempted it, for a popular audience, in "The Virgin Martyr"; and though the tragedy of "The Virgin Martyr" is a huddled mass of beauties and deformities, its materials of incident and characters, could Shakespeare have been attracted to them, might have been organized into as great a drama as Othello. Again, Marlowe, in his play of "Dr. Faustus," has imperfectly treated a subject which in Shakespeare's hands would have been made into a tragedy sublimer than Lear could he have thrown himself into it with equal earnestness. Marlowe, from the fact that he was a positive atheist, and a brawling one, had evidently at some time directed his whole heart and imagination to the consideration of religious questions, and had resolutely faced facts from which Shakespeare turned away.

Shakespeare, also, in common with the other dramatists of the time, looked at the Puritans as objects of satire, laughing at them instead of gazing into them. They were doubtless grotesque enough in external appearance; but the poet of human nature should have penetrated through the appearance to the substance, and recognized in them, not merely the possibility of Cromwell, but of the ideal of character which Cromwell but imperfectly represented. You may say that Shakespeare's nature was too sunny and genial to admit the Puritan. It was not too sunny or genial to admit Richards, and Iagos, and Gonerils, and "secret, black, and midnight hags."

It may be doubted also if Shakespeare's affinities extended to those numerous classes of human character that stand for the reforming and philanthropic sentiments of humanity. We doubt if he was hopeful for the race. He was too profoundly impressed with its disturbing passions to have faith in its continuous progress. Though immensely greater than Bacon, it may be questioned if he could thoroughly have appreciated Bacon's intellectual character. He could have delineated him to perfection in everything but in that peculiar philanthropy of the mind, that spiritual benignity, that belief in man and confidence in his future, which both atone and account for so many of Bacon's moral defects. There is no character in his plays that covers the elements of such a man as Hildebrand or Luther, or either of the two Williams of Orange, or Hampden, or Howard, or Clarkson, or scores of other representative men whom history celebrates. Though the broadest individual nature which human nature has produced, human nature is immensely broader than he.

It would be easy to quote passages from Shakespeare's works which would seem to indicate that his genius was not limited in any of the directions which have been pointed out; but these passages are thoughts and observations, not men and women. Hamlet's soliloquy, and Portia's address to Shylock, might be adduced as proofs that he comprehended the religious element; but then who would take Hamlet or Portia as representative of the religious character in any of its numerous historical forms? There is a remark in one of his plays to this effect:—

"It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in't."

This might be taken as a beautiful expression of Christian toleration, and is certainly admirable as a general thought; but it indicates Shakespeare's indifference to religious passions in indicating his superiority to them. It would have been a much greater achievement of genius to have passed into the mind and heart of the conscientious burner of heretics, seized the essence of the bigot's character, and embodied in one great ideal individual a class of men whom we now both execrate and misconceive. If he could follow the dramatic process of his genius for Sir Toby Belch, why could he not do it for St. Dominic?

Indeed, toleration, in the sense that Shakespeare has given to the word, is not expressed in maxims directed against intolerance, but in the exercise of charity towards intolerant men; and it is thus necessary to indicate the limitations of his sympathy with his race, in order to appreciate its real quality and extent. His unapproached greatness consists not in including human nature, but in taking the point of view of those large classes of human nature he did include. His sympathetic insight was both serious and humorous; and he thus equally escaped the intolerance of taste and the intolerance of intelligence. What we would call the worst criminals and the most stupid fools were, as mirrored in his mind, fairly dealt with; every opportunity was afforded them to justify their right to exist; their words, thoughts, and acts were viewed in relation to their circumstances and character, so that he made them inwardly known, as well as outwardly perceived. The wonder of all this would be increased, if we supposed, for the sake of illustration, that the persons and events of all Shakespeare's plays were historical, and that, instead of being represented by Shakespeare, they were narrated by Macaulay. The result would be that the impression received from the historian of every incident and every person would be different, and would be wrong. The external facts might not be altered; but the falsehood would proceed from the incapacity or indisposition of the historian to pierce to the heart of the facts by sympathy and imagination. There would be abundant information, abundant eloquence, abundant invective against crime, abundant scorn of stupidity and folly, perhaps much sagacious reflection and judicial scrutiny of evidence; but the inward and essential truth would be wanting. What external statement of the acts and probable motives of Macbeth and Othello would convey the idea we have of them from being witnesses of the conflict of their thoughts and passions? How wicked and shallow and feeble and foolish would Hamlet appear, if represented, not in the light of Shakespeare's imagination, but in the light of Macaulay's epigrams! How the historian would "play the dazzling fence" of his rhetoric on the indecision of the prince, his brutality to Ophelia, his cowardice, his impotence between contending motives, and the chaos of blunders and crimes in which he sinks from view! The subject would be even a better one for him than that of James II.; yet the very supposition of such a mode of treatment makes us feel the pathos of the real Hamlet's injunction to the friend who strives to be his companion in death:—

"Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story."

If the historian would thus deal with the heroes, why, such "small deer" as Bardolph and Master Slender would of course be puffed out of existence with one hiss of lordly contempt. Yet Macaulay has a more vivid historical imagination, more power of placing himself in the age about which he writes, than historians like Hume and Hallam, whose judgments of men are summaries of qualities, and imply no inwardness of vision, no discerning of spirits. In the whole class, the point of view is the historian's, and not the point of view of the persons the historian describes. The curse which clings to celebrity is, that it commonly enters history only to be puffed or lampooned.

The truth is, that most men, the intelligent and virtuous as well as the ignorant and vicious, are intolerant of other individualities. They are uncharitable by defect of sympathy and defect of insight. Society, even the best, is apt to be made up of people who are engaged in the agreeable occupation of despising each other; for one association for mutual admiration there are twenty for mutual contempt; yet while conversation is thus mostly made up of strictures on individuals, it rarely evinces any just perception of individualities. James is indignant or jeering at the absence of James in John, and John is horror-stricken at the impudence of James in refusing to be John. Each person feels himself to be misunderstood, though he never questions his power to understand his neighbor. Egotism, vanity, prejudice, pride of opinion, conceit of excellence, a mean delight in recognizing inferiority in others, a meaner delight in refusing to recognize the superiority of others, all the honest and all the base forms of self-assertion, cloud and distort the vision when one mind directs its glance at another. For one person who is mentally conscientious there are thousands who are morally honest. The result is a vast massacre of character, which would move the observer's compassion were it not that the victims are also the culprits, and that pity at the spectacle of the arrow quivering in the sufferer's breast is checked by the sight of the bow bent in the sufferer's hands. This depreciation of others is the most approved method of exalting ourselves. It educates us in self-esteem, if not in knowledge. The savage conceives that the power of the enemy he kills is added to his own. Shakespeare more justly conceived that the power of the human being with whom he sympathized was added to his own.

This toleration, without which an internal knowledge of other natures is impossible, Shakespeare possessed beyond any other man recorded in literature or history. It is a moral as well as mental trait, and belongs to the highest class of virtues. It is a virtue which, if generally exercised, would remove mutual hostility by enlightening mutual ignorance. And in Shakespeare we have, for once, a man great enough to be modest and charitable; who has the giant's power, but, instead of using it like a giant, trampling on weaker creatures, prefers to feel them in his arms rather than feel them under his feet; and whose toleration of others is the exercise of humility, veracity, beneficence, and justice, as well as the exercise of reason, imagination, and humor. We shall never appreciate Shakespeare's genius until we recognize in him the exercise of the most difficult virtues, as well as the exercise of the most wide-reaching intelligence.

It is, of course, not so wonderful that he should take the point of view of characters in themselves beautiful and noble, though even these might appear very different under the glance of a less soul-searching eye. To such aspects of life, however, all genius has a natural affinity. But the marvel of his comprehensiveness is his mode of dealing with the vulgar, the vicious, and the low,—with persons who are commonly spurned as dolts and knaves. His serene benevolence did not pause at what are called "deserving objects of charity," but extended to the undeserving, who are, in truth, the proper objects of charity. If we compare him, in this respect, with poets like Dante and Milton, in whom elevation is the predominant characteristic, we shall find that they tolerate humanity only in its exceptional examples of beauty and might. They are aristocrats of intellect and conscience,—the noblest aristocracy, but also the haughtiest and most exclusive. They can sympathize with great energies, whether celestial or diabolic, but their attitude towards the feeble and the low is apt to be that of indifference, or contempt. Milton can do justice to the Devil, though not, like Shakespeare, to "poor devils." But it may be doubted if the wise and good have the right to cut the Providential bond which connects them with the foolish and the bad, and set up an aristocratic humanity of their own, ten times more supercilious than the aristocracy of blood. Divorce the loftiest qualities from humility and geniality, and they quickly contract a pharisaic taint; and if there is anything which makes the wretched more wretched, it is the insolent condescension of patronizing benevolence,—if there is anything which makes the vicious more vicious, it is the "I-am-better-than-thou" expression on the face of conscious virtue. Now Shakespeare had none of this pride of superiority, either in its noble or ignoble form. Consider that, if his gigantic powers had been directed by antipathies instead of sympathies, he would have left few classes of human character untouched by his terrible scorn. Even if his antipathies had been those of taste and morals, he would have done so much to make men hate and misunderstand each other,—so much to destroy the very sentiment of humanity,—that he would have earned the distinction of being the greatest satirist and the worst man that ever lived. But instead, how humanely he clings to the most unpromising forms of human nature, insists on their right to speak for themselves as much as if they were passionate Romeos and high-aspiring Buckinghams, and does for them what he might have desired should be done for himself had he been Dogberry, or Bottom, or Abhorson, or Bardolph, or any of the rest! The low characters, the clowns and vagabonds, of Ben Jonson's plays, excite only contempt or disgust. Shakespeare takes the same materials as Ben, passes them through the medium of his imaginative humor, and changes them into subjects of the most soul-enriching mirth. Their actual prototypes would not be tolerated; but when his genius shines on them, they "lie in light" before our humorous vision. It must be admitted that in his explorations of the lower levels of human nature he sometimes touches the mud deposits; still he never hisses or jeers at the poor relations through Adam he there discovers, but magnanimously gives them the wink of recognition!

This is one extreme of his genius, the poetic comprehension and embodiment of the low. What was the other extreme? How high did he mount in the ideal region, and what class of his characters represent his loftiest flight? It is commonly asserted that his supernatural beings, his ghosts, spectres, witches, fairies, and the like, exhibiting his command of the dark side and the bright side, the terror and the grace, of the supernatural world, indicate his rarest quality; for in these, it is said, he went out of human nature itself, and created beings that never existed. Wonderful as these are, we must recollect that in them he worked on a basis of popular superstitions, on a mythology as definite as that of Greece and Rome, and though he re-created instead of copying his materials, though he Shakespearianized them, he followed no different process of his genius in delineating Hecate and Titania than in delineating Dame Quickly and Anne Page. All his characters, from the rogue Autolycus to the heavenly Cordelia, are in a certain sense ideal; but the question now relates to the rarity of the elements, and the height of the mood, and not merely to the action of his mind; and we think that the characters technically called supernatural which appear in his works are much nearer the earth than others which, though they lack the name, have more of the spiritual quality of the thing. The highest supernatural is to be found in the purest, highest, most beautiful souls.

Did it never strike you in reading "The Tempest," that Ariel is not so supernatural as Miranda? We may be sure that Ferdinand so thought, in that rapture of wonder when her soul first shone on him through her innocent eyes; and afterwards when he asks,

"I do beseech you (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers) What is your name?"

And doubtless there was a more marvellous melody in her voice than in the mysterious magical music

"That crept by him upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and his passion With its sweet air."

Shakespeare, indeed, in his transcendently beautiful embodiments of feminine excellence, the most exquisite creations in literature, passed into a region of sentiment and thought, of ideals and of ideas, altogether higher and more supernatural than that region in which he shaped his delicate Ariels and his fairy Titanias. The question has been raised whether sex extends to soul. However this may be decided, here is a soul, with its records in literature, who is at once the manliest of men, and the most womanly of women; who can not only recognize the feminine element in existing individuals, but discern the idea, the pattern, the radiant genius of womanhood itself, as it hovers, unseen to other eyes, over the living representatives of the sex. Literature boasts many eminent female poets and novelists; but not one has ever approached Shakespeare in the purity, the sweetness, the refinement, the elevation, of his perceptions of feminine character,—much less approached him in the power of embodying his perceptions in persons. These characters are so thoroughly domesticated on the earth, that we are tempted to forget the heaven of invention from which he brought them. The most beautiful of spirits, they are the most tender of daughters, lovers, and wives. They are "airy shapes," but they "syllable men's names." Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia, Viola, Perdita, Miranda, Desdemona, Hermione, Portia, Isabella, Imogen, Cordelia,—if their names do not call up their natures, the most elaborate analysis of criticism wilt be of no avail. Do you say that these women are slightly idealized portraits of actual women? Was Cordelia, for example, simply a good, affectionate daughter of a foolish old king? To Shakespeare, himself, she evidently partook of divineness; and he hints of the still ecstasy of contemplation in which her nature first rose upon his imagination, when, speaking through the lips of a witness of her tears, he hallows them as they fall:—

"She shook the holy water from her heavenly eyes."

And these Shakespearian women, though all radiations from one great ideal of womanhood, are at the same time intensely individualized. Each has a separate soul, and the processes of intellect as well as emotion are different in each. Each, for example, is endowed with the faculty, and is steeped in the atmosphere, of imagination; but who could mistake the imagination of Ophelia for the imagination of Imogen?—the loitering, lingering movement of the one, softly consecrating whatever it touches, for the irradiating, smiting efficiency, the flash and the bolt, of the other? Imogen is perhaps the most completely expressed of Shakespeare's women; for in her every faculty and affection is fused with imagination, and the most exquisite tenderness is combined with vigor and velocity of nature. Her mind darts in an instant to the ultimate of everything. After she has parted with her husband, she does not merely say that she will pray for him. Her affection is winged, and in a moment she is enskied. She does not look up, she goes up; she would have charged him, she says,

"At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, T'encounter me with orisons, for then I am in heaven for him."

When she hears of her husband's inconstancy, the possible object of his sensual whim is at once consumed in the fire that leaps from her impassioned lips,—

"Some jay of Italy, Whose mother is her painting, hath betrayed him."

Mr. Collier, ludicrously misconceiving the instinctive action of Imogen's mind, thinks the true reading is, "smothers her with painting." Now Imogen's wrath first reduces the light woman to the most contemptible of birds and the most infamous of symbols, the jay, and then, not willing to leave her any substance at all, annihilates her very being with the swift thought that the paint on her cheeks is her mother,—that she is nothing but the mere creation of painting, a phantom born of a color, without real body or soul. It would be easy to show that the mental processes of all Shakespeare's women are as individual as their dispositions.

And now think of the amplitude of this man's soul! Within the immense space which stretches between Dogberry or Launcelot Gobbo and Imogen or Cordelia, lies the Shakespearian world. No other man ever exhibited such philosophic comprehensiveness, but philosophic comprehensiveness is often displayed apart from creative comprehensiveness, and along the whole vast line of facts, laws, analogies, and relations that Shakespeare's intellect extended, his perceptions were vital, his insight was creative, his thoughts flowed in forms. And now was he proud of his transcendent superiorities? Did he think that he had exhausted all that can appear before the sight of the eye and the sight of the soul? No. The immeasurable opulence of the undiscovered and undiscerned regions of existence was never felt with more reverent humility than by this discoverer, who had seen in rapturous vision so many new worlds open on his view. In the play which perhaps best indicates the ecstatic action of his mind, and which is alive in every part with that fiery sense of unlimited power which the mood of ecstasy gives,—in the play of "Antony and Cleopatra," he has put into the mouth of the Soothsayer what seems to have been his own modest judgment of the extent of his glance into the universe of matter and mind:—

"In Nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read!"



LONGFELLOW'S TRANSLATION OF DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA.

In the North American Review for March, 1809, we read of Cary's Dante: "This we can pronounce, with confidence, to be the most literal translation in poetry in our language."

"As to Cary," writes Prescott in 1824, "I think Dante would have given him a place in his ninth heaven, if he could have foreseen his translation. It is most astonishing, giving not only the literal corresponding phrase, but the spirit of the original, the true Dantesque manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the pliability, the sweetness of the English tongue."

If we turn to English scholars, we shall find them holding the same language, and equally ready to assure you that you may confidently accept Cary's version as a faithful transcript of the spirit and letter of the original. And this was the theory of translation throughout almost the first half of the present century. Cary's position in 1839 was higher even than it was in 1824. With many other claims to respect, he was still best known as the translator of Dante.

In 1839 Mr. Longfellow published five passages from the Purgatorio, translated with a rigorous adhesion to the words and idioms of the original. Coming out in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,—Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and expression? Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, had answered no for Greek and Latin, Coleridge for German, Fairfax and Rose and Cary for Italian. But if Mr. Longfellow could translate the whole of the Divina Commedia as he had translated these five passages, great as some of these names were, it was evident that the lovers of poetry would call for new translations of all the great poets. This he has now done. The whole poem is before us, with its fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, the English answering line for line and word for word to the original Italian. We purpose to show, by a careful comparison of test-passages with corresponding passages of Cary, what the American poet has done for the true theory of translation.

It is evident that, while both translators have nominally the same object in view, they follow different paths in their endeavors to reach it; or, in other words, that they come to their task with very different theories of translation, and very different ideas of the true meaning of faithful rendering. Translation, according to Mr. Cary, consists in rendering the author's idea without a strict adherence to the author's words. According to Mr. Longfellow, the author's words form a necessary accompaniment of his idea, and must, wherever the idioms of the two languages admit of it, be rendered by their exact equivalents. The following passage, from the twenty-eighth canto of the Purgatorio, will illustrate our meaning:—

"In questa altezza che tutta e disciolta Nell'aer vivo, tal moto percuote, E fa sonar la selva perch' e folta."

Literally,

In this height which is all detached In the living air, such motion strikes, And makes the wood resound because it is thick.

Such are the words of Dante line by line. Let us now see how Cary renders them:—

"Upon the summit, which on every side To visitation of the impassive air Is open, doth that motion strike, and makes Beneath its sway the umbrageous wood resound."

The fundamental idea of this passage is the explanation of the sound of the forest, and this idea Cary has preserved. But has he preserved it in its force and simplicity and Dantesque directness? We will not dwell upon the rendering of altezza by summit, although a little more care would have preserved the exact word of the original. But we may with good reason object to the expansion of Dante's three lines into four. We may with equal reason object to

"which on every side To visitation of the impassive air Is open,"

as a correct rendering of

"che tutta e disciolta Nell'aer vivo,"—

which is all detached In the living air.

"To visitation of the impassive air,"

is a sonorous verse; but it is not Dante's verse, unless all detached means on every side is open to visitation, and impassive air means living air. Beneath its sway, also, is not Dante's; nor can we accept umbrageous wood, with its unmeaning epithet, for the wood because it is thick, an explanation of the phenomenon which had excited Dante's wonder.

Here, then, we have Cary's theory, the preservation of the fundamental idea, but the free introduction of such accessory ideas as convenience may suggest, whether in the form of epithet or of paraphrase.

Mr. Longfellow's translation of this passage may also be accepted as the exposition of his theory:—

"Upon this height that all is disengaged In living ether, doth this motion strike, And make the forest sound, for it is dense."

We have here the three lines of the original, and in the order of the original; we have the exact words of the original, disciolta meaning disengaged as well as detached, and therefore the ideas of the original without modification or change. The passage is not a remarkable one in form, although a very important one in the description of which it forms a part. The sonorous second line of Mr. Cary's version is singularly false to the movement, as well as to the thought, of the original. Mr. Longfellow's lines have the metric character of Dante's precise and direct description.

The next triplet brings out the difference between the two theories even more distinctly:—

"E la percossa pianta tanto puote Che della sua virtute l'aura impregna, E quella poi girando intorno scuote."

And the stricken plant has so much power That with its virtue it impregnates the air, And that then revolving shakes around.

Thus far Dante.

"And in the shaken plant such power resides, That it impregnates with its efficacy The voyaging breeze, upon whose subtle plume That, wafted, flies abroad."

Thus far Cary.

Cary's first line is a tolerably near approach to the original, although a distinction might be made between the force of power resides in, and power possessed by. The second line falls short of the conciseness of the original by transposing the object of impregnates into the third. This, however, though a blemish, might also be passed over. But what shall we say to the expansion of aura into a full line, and that line so Elizabethan and un-Dantesque as

"The voyaging breeze upon whose subtle plume"?

In this, too, Mr. Cary is faithful to his theory. Mr. Longfellow is equally faithful to his:—

"And so much power the stricken plant possesses, That with its virtue it impregns the air, And this, revolving, scatters it around."

We have seen how Cary's theory permits the insertion of a new line, or, more correctly speaking, the expansion of a single word into a full line. But it admits also of the opposite extreme,—the suppression of an entire line.

"Ch'io vidi, e anche udi'parlar lo rostro, E sonar nella voce ed io e mio, Quand'era nel concetto noi e nostro."

For I saw and also heard speak the beak, And sound in its voice and I and my, When it was in the conception we and our.

Paradiso, XIX. 10.

There is doubtless something quaint and peculiar in these lines, but it is the quaintness and peculiarity of Dante. The I and my, the we and our, are traits of that direct and positive mode of expression which is one of the distinctive characteristics of his style. Do we find it in Cary?

"For I beheld and heard The beak discourse; and what intention formed Of many, singly as of one express."

Do we not find it in Longfellow?

"For speak I saw, and likewise heard, the beak, And utter with its voice both I and My, When in conception it was We and Our."

It is not surprising that the two translators, starting with theories essentially so different, should have produced such different results. Which of these results is most in harmony with the legitimate object of translation can hardly admit of a doubt. For the object of translation is to convey an accurate idea of the original, or, in other words, to render the words and idioms of the language from which the translation is made by their exact equivalents in the language into which it is made. The translator is bound by the words of the original. He is bound, so far as the difference between languages admits of it, by the idioms of the original. And as the effect of words and idioms depends in a great measure upon the skill with which they are arranged, he is bound also by the rhythm of the original. If you would copy Raphael, you must not give him the coloring of Titian. The calm dignity of the "School of Athens" conveys a very imperfect idea of the sublime energy of the sibyls and prophets of the Sistine Chapel.

But can this exactitude be achieved without forcing language into such uncongenial forms as to produce an artificial effect, painfully reminding you, at every step, of the labor it cost? And here we come to the question of fact; for if Mr. Longfellow has succeeded, the answer is evident. We purpose, therefore, to take a few test-passages, and, placing the two translations side by side with the original, give our readers an opportunity of making the comparison for themselves.

First, however, let us remind the reader that, if it were possible to convey an accurate idea of Dante's style by a single word, that word would be power. Whatever he undertakes to say, he says in the form best suited to convey his thought to the reader's mind as it existed in his own mind. If it be a metaphysical idea, he finds words for it which give it the distinctness and reality of a physical substance. If it be a landscape, he brings it before you, either in outline or in detail, either by form or by color, as the occasion requires, but always with equal force. That landscape of his ideal world ever after takes its place in your memory by the side of the landscapes of your real world. Even the sounds which he has described linger in the ear as the types of harshness, or loudness, or sweetness, instantly coming back to you whenever you listen to the roaring of the sea, or the howling of the wind, or the carol of birds. He calls things by their names, never shrinking from a homely phrase where the occasion demands it, nor substituting circumlocution for direct expression. Words with him seem to be things, real and tangible; not hovering like shadows over an idea, but standing out in the clear light, bold and firm, as the distinct representatives of an idea. In his verse every word has its appropriate place, and something to do in that place which no other word could do there. Change it, and you feel at once that something has been lost.

Next to power, infinite variety is the characteristic of Dante's style, as it is of his invention. With a stronger individuality than any poet of any age or country, there is not a trace of mannerism in all his poem. The stern, the tender, the grand, simple exposition, fierce satire, and passionate appeal have each their appropriate words and their appropriate cadence. This Cary did not perceive, and has told the stories of Francesca and of Ugolino with the same Miltonian modulation. Longfellow, by keeping his original constantly before him, has both seen and reproduced it.

We begin our quotations with the celebrated inscription over the gate of hell, and the entrance of the two poets into "the secret things." The reader will remember that the last three triplets contain a remarkable example of the correspondence of sound with sense.

"Per me si va nella citta dolente; Per me si va nell'eterno dolore; Per me si va tra la perduta gente; Giustizia mosse'l mio alto fattore; Fecemi la divina potestate, La somma sapienza e'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fur cose create Se non eterne, ed io eterno duro: Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate. Queste parole di colore oscuro Vid'io scritte al sommo d'una porta; Perch'io: maestro, il senso lor m'e duro. Ed egli a me, come persona accorta: Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto, Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta. Noi sem venuti al luogo ov'io t'ho detto Che vederai le genti dolorose Ch' hanno perduto il ben dello'ntelletto. E poiche la sua mano alla mia pose Con lieto volto, ond'io mi confortai, Mi mise dentro alle secrete cose. Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai Risonavan per l'aer senza stelle, Perch'io al cominciar ne lagrimai. Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, Facevano un tumulto il qual s'aggira Sempre'n quell'aria senza tempo tinta, Come la rena quando'l turbo spira."

Inferno, III. 1-30.

"'Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole; Through me the way among the people lost. Justice incited my sublime Creator; Created me divine Omnipotence, The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!' These words in sombre color I beheld Written upon the summit of a gate; Whence I: 'Their sense is, Master, hard to me!' And he to me, as one experienced: 'Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, All cowardice must needs be here extinct. We to the place have come, where I have told thee Thou shalt behold the people dolorous Who have foregone the good of intellect.' And after he had laid his hand on mine With joyful mien, whence I was comforted, He led me in among the secret things. There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. Languages diverse, horrible dialects, Accents of anger, words of agony, And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, Made up a tumult that goes whirling on Forever in that air forever black, Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes."—Longfellow.

"'Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.' Such characters, in color dim, I marked Over a portal's lofty arch inscribed. Whereat I thus: 'Master, these words import Hard meaning.' He as one prepared replied: 'Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave; Here be vile fear extinguished. We are come Where I have told thee we shall see the souls To misery doomed, who intellectual good Have lost.' And when his hand he had stretched forth To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheered. Into that secret place he led me on. 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, Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, With hands together smote that swelled the sounds, Made up a tumult, that forever whirls Round through that air with solid darkness stained, Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies."

Cary.

The following, though less remarkable for its poetry than many others which we might select, is very difficult for the translator. We cite it as an illustration of the boldness with which Mr. Longfellow meets difficulties.

"E quale e quei che suo dannaggio sogna, Che sognando disidera sognare, Si che quel ch'e, come non fosse, agogna; Tal mi fec'io non potendo parlare: Che disiava scusarmi e scusava Me tuttavia e not mi credea fare Maggior difetto men vergogna lava, Disse'l maestro, che'l tuo non e stato: Pero d'ogni tristizia ti disgrava; E fa ragion ch'io ti sempre allato, Se piu avvien che fortuna t'accoglia Dove sien genti in simigliante piato: Che voler cio udire e bassa voglia."

Inferno, XXX. 136-148.

"And as he is who dreams of his own harm. Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream, So that he craves what is, as if it were not; Such I became, not having power to speak, For to excuse myself I wished, and still Excused myself, and did not think I did it. 'Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,' The Master said, 'than this of thine has been; Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, And make account that I am aye beside thee, If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee Where there are people in a like dispute; For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.'"

Longfellow.

"As a man that dreams of harm Befallen him, dreaming wishes it a dream, And that which is, desires as if it were not; Such then was I, who, wanting power to speak, Wished to excuse myself, and all the while Excused me, though unweeting that I did. 'More grievous fault than thine has been, less shame,' My master cried, 'might expiate. Therefore cast All sorrow from thy soul; and if again Chance bring thee where like conference is held, Think I am ever at thy side. To hear Such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds.'"

Cary.

The following passage from the Purgatorio is not only strikingly difficult, but strikingly beautiful.

"Ed un di lor, non questi che parlava, Si torse sotto'l peso che lo 'mpaccia, E videmi e conobbemi, e chiamava Tenendo gli occhi con fatica fisi A me che tutto chin con loro andava. Oh, diss'io lui, non se'tu Oderisi, L'onor d'Agobbio e l'onor di quell'arte Ch'alluminare e chiamata in Parisi? Frate, diss' egli, piu ridon le carte Che pennelleggia Franco Bolognese: L'onore e tutto or suo, e mio in parte. Ben non sare'io stato si cortese Mentre ch'io vissi, per lo gran disio Dell'eccellenza ove mio core intese. Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio: Ed ancor non sarei qui, se non fosse Che, possendo peccar, mi volsi a Dio. Oh vana gloria dell'umane posse, Com' poco verde in su la cima dura Se non e giunta dall'etadi grosse! Credette Cimabue nella pintura Tenor lo campo; ed ora ha Giotto il grido, Si che la fama di colui s' oscura. Cosi ha tolto l'uno all'altro Guido La gloria della lingua; e forse e nato Chi l'uno e l'altro caccera di nido. Non e il mondan romore altro ch' un fiato Di vento ch' or vien quinci ed or vien quindi, E muta nome perche muta lato. Che fama avrai tu piu se vecchia scindi Da te la carne, che se fossi morto Innanzi che lasciassi il pappo e'l dindi, Pria che passin mill'anni? ch'e piu corto Spazio all' eterno ch'un muover di ciglia Al cerchio che piu tardi in cielo e torto. Colui che del cammin si poco piglia Diranzi a te, Toscana sono tutta, Ed ora appena in Siena sen pispiglia, Ond'era sire, quando fu distrutta La rabbia Fiorentina, che superba Fu a quel tempo si com'ora e putta. La vostra nominanza e color d'erba Che viene e va, e quei la discolora Per cui ell'esce della terra acerba."

Purgatorio, XI. 74-117.

"And one of them, not this one who was speaking, Twisted himself beneath the weight that cramps him, And looked at me, and knew me, and called out, Keeping his eyes laboriously fixed On me, who all bowed down was going with them. 'O,' asked I him, 'art thou not Oderisi, Agobbio's honor, and honor of that art Which is in Paris called illuminating?' 'Brother,' said he, 'more laughing are the leaves Touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese; All his the honor now, and mine in part. In sooth I had not been so courteous While I was living, for the great desire Of excellence, on which my heart was bent. Here of such pride is payed the forfeiture: And yet I should not be here, were it not That, having power to sin, I turned to God. O thou vain glory of the human powers, How little green upon thy summit lingers, If 't be not followed by an age of grossness! In painting Cimabue thought that he Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry, So that the other's fame is growing dim. So has one Guido from the other taken The glory of our tongue, and he perchance Is born, who from the nest shall chase them both. Naught is this mundane rumor but a breath Of wind, that comes now this way and now that, And changes name, because it changes side. What fame shalt thou have more, if old peel off From thee thy flesh, than if thou hadst been dead Before thou left the pappo and the dindi, Ere pass a thousand years? which is a shorter Space to the eterne, than twinkling of an eye Unto the circle that in heaven wheels slowest. With him, who takes so little of the road In front of me, all Tuscany resounded; And now he scarce is lisped of in Siena, Where he was lord, what time was overthrown The Florentine delirium, that superb Was at that day as now 'tis prostitute. Your reputation is the color of grass Which comes and goes, and that discolors it By which it issues green from out the earth.'"

Longfellow.

"Listening I bent my visage down: and one (Not he who spake) twisted beneath the weight That urged him, saw me, knew me straight, and called; Holding his eyes with difficulty fixed Intent upon me, stooping as I went Companion of their way. 'Oh!' I exclaimed, 'Art thou not Oderigi? art not thou Agobbio's glory, glory of that art Which they of Paris call the limner's skill?' 'Brother!' said he, 'with tints that gayer smile, Bolognian Franco's pencil lines the leaves. His all the honor now; my light obscured. In truth, I had not been thus courteous to him The while I lived, through eagerness of zeal For that pre-eminence my heart was bent on. Here, of such pride, the forfeiture is paid. Nor were I even here, if, able still To sin, I had not turned me unto God. O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipped E'en in its height of verdure, if an age Less bright succeed not. Cimabue thought To lord it over painting's field; and now The cry is Giotto's, and his name eclipsed. Thus hath one Guido from the other snatched The lettered prize; and he, perhaps, is born, Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind, That blows from diverse points, and shifts its name, Shifting the point it blows from. Shalt thou more Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh Part shrivelled from thee, than if thou hadst died Before the coral and the pap were left, Or e'er some thousand years have passed? and that Is, to eternity compared, a space Briefer than is the twinkling of an eye To the heaven's slowest orb. He there, who treads So leisurely before me, far and wide Through Tuscany resounded once; and now Is in Sienna scarce with whispers named: There was he sovereign, when destruction caught The maddening rage of Florence, in that day Proud as she now is loathsome. Your renown Is as the herb, whose hue doth come and go; And his might withers it, by whom it sprang Crude from the lap of earth.'"—Cary.

For much the same reason as that already stated, we give the following beautiful passage, a touching story in itself, but how deeply touching in the energetic directness and simplicity of Dante's verse!

"Io mossi i pie del luogo dov'io stava Per avvisar da presso un'altra storia Che diretro a Micol mi biancheggiava. Quivi era storiata l'alta gloria Del roman prence lo cui gran valore Mosse Gregorio alla sua gran vittoria: I' dico di Trajano imperadore; Ed una vedovella gli era al freno Di lagrime atteggiata e di dolore. Dintorno a lui parea calcato e pieno Di cavalieri, e l'aguglie nell'oro Sovr' essi in vista al vento si movieno. La miserella intra tutti costoro Parea dicer: signor, fammi vendetta Del mio figliuol ch'e morto, ond'io m'accoro; Ed egli a lei rispondere: ora aspetta Tanto ch'io torni; e quella: signor mio (Come persona in cui dolor s'affretta) Se tu non torni? ed ei: chi fia dov'io, La ti fara; ed ella: l'altrui bene A te che fia, se'l tuo metti in oblio? Ond'elli: or ti conforta, che conviene Ch'io solva il mio dovere anzi ch'io muova: Giustizia vuole e pieta mi ritiene. Colui che mai non vide cosa nuova Produsse esto visibile parlare, Novello a noi perche qui non si truova."

Purgatorio, X. 70-96.

"I moved my feet from where I had been standing, To examine near at hand another story, Which after Michal glimmered white upon me. There the high glory of the Roman Prince Was chronicled, whose great beneficence Moved Gregory to his great victory; 'Tis of the Emperor Trajan I am speaking; And a poor widow at his bridle stood, In attitude of weeping and of grief. Around about him seemed it thronged and full Of cavaliers, and the eagles in the gold Above them visibly in the wind were moving. The wretched woman in the midst of these Seemed to be saying: 'Give me vengeance, Lord, For my dead son, for whom my heart is breaking.' And he to answer her: 'Now wait until I shall return.' And she: 'My Lord,' like one In whom grief is impatient, 'shouldst thou not Return?' And he: 'Who shall be where I am Will give it thee.' And she: 'Good deed of others What boots it thee, if thou neglect thine own? Whence he: 'Now comfort thee, for it behoves me That I discharge my duty ere I move; Justice so wills, and pity doth retain me.' He who on no new thing has ever looked Was the creator of this visible language, Novel to us, for here it is not found."

Longfellow.

"To behold the tablet next, Which, at the back of Michol, whitely shone, I moved me. There was storied on the rock The exalted glory of the Roman prince, Whose mighty worth moved Gregory to earn His mighty conquest, Trajan the Emperor. A widow at his bridle stood, attired In tears and mourning. Round about them trooped Full throng of knights; and overhead in gold The eagles floated, struggling with the wind. The wretch appeared amid all these to say: 'Grant vengeance, Sire! for, woe beshrew this heart, My son is murdered.' He replying seemed: 'Wait now till I return.' And she, as one Made hasty by her grief: 'O Sire! if thou Dost not return?'—'Where I am, who then is, May right thee.'—'What to thee is other's good, If thou neglect thy own?'—'Now comfort thee,' At length he answers. 'It beseemeth well My duty be performed, ere I move hence: So justice wills; and pity bids me stay.' He, whose ken nothing new surveys, produced That visible speaking, new to us and strange, The like not found on earth."—Cary.

How different is the character of the following description, which fills the ear with its grand and varied harmony, as it fills the mind with a rapid succession of pictures!

"Io m'era mosso e seguia volentieri Del mio maestro i passi, ed amendue Gia mostravam com'eravam leggieri, Quando mi disse: Volgi gli occhi in giue; Buon ti sara per alleggiar la via Veder lo letto delle piante tue. Come, perche di lor memoria fia, Sovr'a'sepolti le tombe terragne Portan segnato quel ch'elli eran pria; Onde li molte volte si ripiagne Per la puntura della rimembranza Che solo a'pii da delle calcagne: Si vid'io li, ma di miglior sembianza, Secondo l'artificio, figurato Quanto per via di fuor del monte avanza. Vedea colui che fu nobil creato Piu d'altra creatura giu dal cielo Folgoreggiando scendere da un lato. Vedeva Briareo fitto dal teio Celestial giacer dall'altra parte, Grave alia terra per lo mortal gelo Vedea Timbreo, vedea Pallade e Marte Armati ancora intorno al padre loro Mirar le membra de'giganti sparte. Vedea Nembrotto appie del gran lavoro Quasi smarrito riguardar le genti Che'n Sennaar con lui insieme foro. O Niobe, con che occhi dolenti Vedev'io te segnata in su la strada Tra sette e sette tuoi figliuoli spenti! O Saul, come'n su la propria spada Quivi parevi morto in Gelboe Che poi non senti pioggia ne rugiada! O folle Aragne, si vedea io te Gia mezza ragna, trista in su gli stracci Dell opera che mal per te si fe'. O Roboam, gia non par che minnacci Quivi il tuo segno, ma pien di spavento Nel porta un carro prima ch' altri'l cacci. Mostrava ancora il duro pavimento Come Almeone a sua madre fe'caro Parer lo sventurato adornamento. Mostrava come i figli si gittaro Sovra Sennacherib dentro dal tempio, E come morto lui quivi lasciaro. Mostrava la ruina e'l crudo scempio Che fe'Tamiri quando disse a Ciro Sangue sitisti, ed io di sangue t'empio. Mostrava come in rotta si fuggiro Gli Assiri poi che fu morto Oloferne, Ed anche le reliquie del martiro. Vedeva Troja in cenere e in caverne: O Ilion, come te basso e vile Mostrava il segno che li si discerne! Qual di pennel fu maestro o di stile, Che ritraesse l'ombre e gli atti ch'ivi Mirar farieno uno'ngegno sottile? Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi. Non vide me'di me chi vide'l vero, Quant'io calcai fin che chinato givi."

Purgatorio, XII. 10-69

"I had moved on, and followed willingly The footsteps of my Master, and we both Already showed how light of foot we were, When unto me he said: 'Cast down thine eyes; 'Twere well for thee, to alleviate the way, To look upon the bed beneath thy feet.' As, that some memory may exist of them, Above the buried dead their tombs in earth Bear sculptured on them what they were before; Whence often there we weep for them afresh, From pricking of remembrance, which alone To the compassionate doth set its spur; So saw I there, but of a better semblance In point of artifice, with figures covered Whate'er as pathway from the mount projects. I saw that one who was created noble More than all other creatures, down from heaven Flaming with lightnings fall upon one side. I saw Briareus smitten by the dart Celestial, lying on the other side, Heavy upon the earth by mortal frost. I saw Thymbraeus, Pallas saw, and Mars, Still clad in armor round about their father, Gaze at the scattered members of the giants. I saw, at foot of his great labor, Nimrod, As if bewildered, looking at the people Who had been proud with him in Sennaar. O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, Between thy seven and seven children slain! O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa, That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew! O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld E'en then half spider, sad upon the shreds Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! O Rehoboam! no more seems to threaten Thine image there; but full of consternation A chariot bears it off, when none pursues! Displayed moreo'er the adamantine pavement How unto his own mother made Alcmaeon Costly appear the luckless ornament; Displayed how his own sons did throw themselves Upon Sennacherib within the temple, And how, he being dead, they left him there; Displayed the ruin and the cruel carnage That Tomyris wrought, when she to Cyrus said, 'Blood didst thou thirst for, and with blood I glut thee!' Displayed how routed fled the Assyrians After that Holofernes had been slain, And likewise the remainder of that slaughter. I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns; O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased, Displayed the image that is there discerned! Who e'er of pencil master was or stile, That could portray the shades and traits which there Would cause each subtile genius to admire? Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive; Better than I saw not who saw the truth, All that I trod upon while bowed I went."

Longfellow.

"I now my leader's track not loath pursued; And each had shown how light we fared along, When thus he warned me: 'Bend thine eyesight down: For thou, to ease the way, shalt find it good To ruminate the bed beneath thy feet.' As, in memorial of the buried, drawn Upon earth-level tombs, the sculptured form Of what was once, appears, (at sight whereof Tears often stream forth, by remembrance waked, Whose sacred stings the piteous often feel,) So saw I there, but with more curious skill Of portraiture o'erwrought, whate'er of space From forth the mountain stretches. On one part Him I beheld, above all creatures erst Created noblest, lightening fall from heaven: On the other side, with bolt celestial pierced, Briareus; cumbering earth he lay, through dint Of mortal ice-stroke. The Thymbraean god, With Mars, I saw, and Pallas, round their sire, Armed still, and gazing on the giants' limbs Strewn o'er the ethereal field. Nimrod I saw: At foot of the stupendous work he stood, As if bewildered, looking on the crowd Leagued in his proud attempt on Sennaar's plain. O Niobe! in what a trance of woe Thee I beheld, upon that highway drawn, Seven sons on either side thee slain. O Saul! How ghastly didst thou look, on thine own sword Expiring, in Gilboa, from that hour Ne'er visited with rain from heaven, or dew. O fond Arachne! thee I also saw, Half spider now, in anguish, crawling up The unfinished web thou weavedst to thy bane. O Rehoboam! here thy shape doth seem Lowering no more defiance; but fear-smote, With none to chase him, in his chariot whirled. Was shown beside upon the solid floor, How dear Alcmaeon forced his mother rate That ornament, in evil hour received: How, in the temple, on Sennacherib fell His sons, and how a corpse they left him there. Was shown the scath, and cruel mangling made By Tomyris on Cyrus, when she cried, 'Blood thou didst thirst for: take thy fill of blood.' Was shown how routed in the battle fled The Assyrians, Holofernes slain, and e'en The relics of the carnage. Troy I marked, In ashes and in caverns. Oh! how fallen, How abject, Ilion, was thy semblance there! What master of the pencil or the style Had traced the shades and lines, that might have made The subtlest workman wonder? Dead, the dead; The living seemed alive: with clearer view His eye beheld not who beheld the truth, Than mine what I did tread on, while I went Low bending."—Cary.

The following is distinguished from all that we have cited thus far by softness and delicacy of touch.

"Vago gia di cercar dentro e d'intorno La divina foresta spessa e viva Ch'agli occhi temperava il nuovo giorno, Senza piu aspettar lasciai la riva Prendendo la campagna lento lento Su per lo suol che d'ogni parte oliva. Un'aura dolce senza mutamento Avere in se, mi feria per la fronte, Non di piu colpo che soave vento: Per cui le fronde tremolando pronte Tutte quante piegavano alla parte U'la prim' ombra gitta il santo monte; Non pero dal loro esser dritto sparte Tanto, che gli augelletti per le cime Lasciasser d'operare ogni lor arte; Ma con piena letizia l'ore prime Cantando ricevieno intra le foglie Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime, Tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi, Quand'Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie. Gia m'avean trasportato i lenti passi Dentro all'antica selva tanto, ch'io Non potea rivedere ond'io m'entrassi; Ed ecco il piu andar mi tolse un rio Che'nver sinistra con sue picciol'onde Piegava l'erba che'n sua ripa uscio. Tutte l'acque che son di qua piu monde Parrieno avere in se mistura alcuna Verso di quella che nulla nasconde, Avvegna che si muova bruna bruna Sotto l'ombra perpetua, che mai Raggiar non lascia sole ivi ne luna. Co' pie ristetti e con gli occhi passai Di la dal fiumicel per ammirare La gran variazion de'freschi mai; E la m'apparve, si com'egli appare Subitamente cosa che disvia Per maraviglia tutt'altro pensare, Una donna soletta che si gia Cantando ed iscegliendo fior da fiore Ond' era pinta tutta la sua via."

Purgatorio, XXVIII. 1-42.

"Eager already to search in and round The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, Which tempered to the eyes the new-born day, Withouten more delay I left the bank, Taking the level country slowly, slowly Over the soil that everywhere breathes fragrance. A softly-breathing air, that no mutation Had in itself, upon the forehead smote me No heavier blow than of a gentle wind, Whereat the branches, lightly tremulous, Did all of them bow downward toward that side Where its first shadow casts the Holy Mountain; Yet not from their upright direction swayed, So that the little birds upon their tops Should leave the practice of each art of theirs; But with full ravishment the hours of prime, Singing, received they in the midst of leaves, That ever bore a burden to their rhymes, Such as from branch to branch goes gathering on Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, When Eolus unlooses the Sirocco. Already my slow steps had carried me Into the ancient wood so far, that I Could not perceive where I had entered it. And lo! my further course a stream cut off, Which tow'rd the left hand with its little waves Bent down the grass that on its margin sprang. All waters that on earth most limpid are Would seem to have within themselves some mixture Compared with that which nothing doth conceal, Although it moves on with a brown, brown current Under the shade perpetual, that never Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. With feet I stayed, and with mine eyes I passed Beyond the rivulet, to look upon The great variety of the fresh may. And there appeared to me (even as appears Suddenly something that doth turn aside Through very wonder every other thought) A lady all alone, who went along Singing and culling floweret after floweret, With which her pathway was all painted over."

Longfellow.

"Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade With lively greenness the new-springing day Attempered, eager now to roam, and search Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank; Along the champaign leisurely my way Pursuing, o'er the ground, that on all sides Delicious odor breathed. A pleasant air, That intermitted never, never veered, Smote on my temples, gently, as a wind Of softest influence: at which the sprays, Obedient all, leaned trembling to that part Where first the holy mountain casts his shade; Yet were not so disordered, but that still Upon their top the feathered quiristers Applied their wonted art, and with full joy Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays Kept tenor; even as from branch to branch, Along the piny forests on the shore Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody. When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed The dripping south. Already had my steps, Though slow, so far into that ancient wood Transported me, I could not ken the place Where I had entered; when, behold! my path Was bounded by a rill, which, to the left, With little rippling waters bent the grass That issued from its brink. On earth no wave How clean soe'er, that would not seem to have Some mixture in itself, compared with this, Transpicuous clear; yet darkly on it rolled Darkly beneath perpetual gloom, which ne'er Admits or sun or moonlight there to shine. My feet advanced not; but my wondering eyes Passed onward, o'er the streamlet, to survey The tender May-bloom, flushed through many a hue, In prodigal variety: and there, As object, rising suddenly to view, That from our bosom every thought beside With the rare marvel chases, I beheld A lady all alone, who, singing, went, And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way Was all o'er painted."—Cary.