know you love me, and I can die happy. I will wait for you. Oh, John! wherever I am, if I have any life and any remembrance, I will wait for you. Never forget that, all your life. However far I may seem away, if I live at all, I shall be waiting for you' (p. 227). This to the man who, as she knows and wishes, is going to marry her own sister Bessie. Why should not Bessie in that farther stage of being, and with far higher claims, be waiting for him too? This half-surrender enervates the story; nor is the fault redeemed by the circumstances of her death and the author's reflections upon it. Her head sank gently on her lover's breast as on a pillow, and there she died and passed upward towards the wider and larger liberty, or, as some would have us believe, downwards into the depths of an eternal sleep' (p. 332). The alternative here so gratuitously obtruded affords an illustration of Mr. Haggard's method of dealing with the most serious questions, a method against which we desire in conclusion to utter our most emphatic protest. Throughout these stories the truth of Christianity is treated as an entirely open, almost as an indifferent, question. A chapter in The Witch's Head, entitled 'Mr. Alston's Views,' represents this thoughtful friend and adviser of Ernest Kershaw as sneering at the younger man's hopes of immortality. Ah! you believe that, do you? Think you are immortal and that sort of thing!' Several pages are devoted to the exposition of Mr. Alston's opinions, which rarely surpass the low level of agnosticism. Perhaps, he says - and he seldom gets beyond a perhaps— we, as compared with the insect tribe, ' are at the top of the tree of development, and for them may be the future, for us the annihilation. Who knows? There, fly away, and make the most of the present, for nothing else is certain.' Then, after the usual travesty of the Christian faith, he concludes :— 'When Fate finds me I shall meet him fearing nothing, for I know he has wreaked his worst upon me, and can only at the utmost bring me eternal sleep; and hoping nothing, because my experience has not been such as to justify the hope of any happiness for man, and my vanity is not sufficiently strong to allow me to believe in the intervention of a superior power to save so miserable a creature from the common lot of life.' On the following day his fate found him' (p. 248). We are of course not about to enter upon any refutation of Mr. Alston's views, nor even upon the exposure of the exquisite pride, in the garb of humility, which could regard the deepest of problems as sufficiently solved by his own individual experience. It accords with such convictions that the con stancy of Jess should be undermined in the hour of trial by the persuasion that free-will is denied us. The miserably degrading tendency of modern so-called intellectual scepticism is nowhere perhaps more clearly marked than in its reduction of mankind to blind automata driven helplessly forward by irresistible destiny. 'Jess felt her impotence in the hands of Fate. All in an instant it seemed to be borne in upon her mind that she could not help herself, but was only the instrument of a superior power, whose will she was fulfilling through the workings of her passion, and to whom her individual fate was a matter of little moment. It was inconclusive reasoning and perilous doctrine, but it must be allowed that the circumstances gave it the colour of truth. And, after all, the border line between fatalism and free will has never been quite authoritatively settled, even by St. Paul, so perhaps she was right' (p. 148). Has anyone, with a just sense of moral responsibility, the right to fling about at random such inconclusive reasoning and perilous doctrine, unless he has definitely renounced the blessed assurance of a loving care for us, so minute that the very hairs of our head are all numbered? Nor are such blemishes as these relieved by the tone in which Mr. Haggard refers to the most awful subjects in his lighter works. We are indignant at the use of sacred things as mere colours to add effect to an imaginative picture, or to give point to a description of the grotesque. It is, in our judgment, sheer profanity to heighten the foul account of She's death by adding, 'Let all men pray to God that they may never see such a sight if they wish to preserve their reason.' It is time for us to bring these strictures to a close. We have written in no carping or captious spirit, but under a strong sense of the mischief which is wrought by the unrestrained acceptance of such works as those before us. 'Literary falsehood,' it has been well said, 'is pernicious, not in proportion to its magnitude or malice, but to its unsuspected character, and to its appeal to the vain imaginations and idle prejudices of the reader.' The false taste which introduces the reek of the shambles into fiction is outdone by the false sentiment which intermingles truth and error on their pages, to the gradual confusion of all moral truth. Was it not Goethe who said, 'Tell me your firm convictions; keep your doubts to yourself; I have plenty of my own'? Christianity must be, and is, prepared to hold its own in the arena of the fullest and most open discussion; but the handling of deep problems after Mr. Haggard's fashion is little less than grave impertinence and ostentatious folly. ART. VII.-TWO MORE TRANSLATIONS OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA. 1. The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, translated line for line in the Terza Rima of the Original, with Notes. By FREDERICK K. H. HASELFOOT, M.A. (London, 1887.) 2. The Commedia and Canzoniere of Dante Alighieri. A New Translation with Notes and Essays, and a Biographical Introduction. By E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., Dean of Wells. In Two Volumes. (London, 1886 and 1887.) THE imperfection of all things natural, and of those new creations which art 'adds to nature,' is a theme tolerably familiar to all. Se fosse appunto la cera dedutta, E fosse il cielo in sua virtù suprema, Ch' ha l'abito dell' arte e man che trema.1 Nor is it the artist's hand alone that is at fault. Forma non s'accorda Molte fiate all' intenzion dell' arte, Perchè a risponder la materia è sorda.2 And yet, however we may explain it-whether by the natural craving of conscious imperfection for some strength beyond its own, or through dreamlike memories of something perfect, known to us before the 'sleep and the forgetting' of our birth we find much in nature and in art (ever more, perhaps, the wiser we become) to which we willingly and unreservedly ascribe perfection. All cannot indeed hope, many would not even wish, to experience that ecstasy of 'divine madness,' those tremblings of the spirit' that hath its dwelling in the heart's most secret chambers,' of which we read in the Phædrus and the Vita Nuova; but all of us surely know what it is to surrender ourselves in restful content to that which we accept as perfection made manifest in the imperfect-a perfection which is often wholly veiled from us, but which sometimes, 'in seasons of fair weather,' stands out, as it were, with wonderful distinctness on the far horizon. This self-surrender, this recognition of the presence of perfection, is indeed an indispensable means for the attainment of true life. By it we are brought into a living organic relation with external things, and are supplied with what Plato quaintly calls the 'fodder of the soul,' by which alone it can be nourished for its winged chariot-flight towards the apse of heaven; by which—to express it less metaphorically -the soul is strengthened for its aspiration towards that perfection which is the end of all spiritual energy, perhaps of all energy whatsoever. By this, or by some other, theory we may endeavour to explain to ourselves the fact-for a fact it surely is that while there are some things in nature and in art which we gratefully and without conscious self-delusion accept as perfect, and from which we draw life-giving nourishment, there are many others essentially different from these-dark points and surfaces in our 'dome of glass' unillumined by the white radiance of eternity'-objects that may indeed supply much active exercise to brain and senses, but with which our soul seems never to enter into any organic relationship; which remain for us ever mere phenomena. It may be due to some unfortunate idiosyncrasies or prejudices, but to not a few men translations of poetic masterpieces seem ever to remain in the category of phenomena. The feeling that such men experience in regard to the most successful translations of the Antigone, of Hamlet, or of the Divina Commedia, is something intrinsically different from the feeling with which they regard the originals. Nay more, they can conceive no possible translation towards which they could be otherwise affected. That this does not hold true for all minds is evident. Notable instances to the contrary will readily occur to all. No purer inspiration was ever drawn from any source than that which Keats drew from Chapman's version of Homer. No more fervent enthusiasm for the 'signor dell' altissimo canto, Che sovra gli altri come aquila vola,' 1 ever found utterance than that which Keats has expressed in his famous sonnet. Another oft-quoted exception is that of the Bible, which, whatever else it be, is a poetic masterpiece. In extent and multiformity of influence the translations of the Bible are to their original as the spreading branches and multitudinous foliage of some mighty tree are to its gnarled and leafless trunk, and all in various degrees-from Luther's Bible to the last rude version by some Central African missionary—preserve a living relation to the parent stem. But by ordinary humanity, and in the case of ordinary works of human genius, the most that is generally accorded to any translation is that it is a 'success'-an extraordinary success perhaps-successful, may be, over all rivals, and beyond all expectation-but nothing more; nothing of that which we might accord to a simple wild flower, to a simple melody by Beethoven, or to a single line by Dante. We applaud, we are amazed at the dexterity, the ingenuity, the assiduity of the translator; we may find it difficult to determine, as Macaulay found it difficult when reviewing Cary's Dante, whether to praise more the writer's intimacy with the language of the original, or the extraordinary mastery over his own;' we may note with sympathy the reverence with which he has approached his subject, the 'lungo studio' which he has expended, the 'grande amore' which has led him not only to explore but also to reproduce in another tongue some such 'sacred song' as the Divine Comedy. But admiration and sympathy are the only feelings aroused; there is no selfsurrender; there is no recognition of even a possibility of perfection. Let us consider, not only whether we have justifiable grounds for being thus affected, but whether we are actually thus affected towards everything that we style a translation. It is evident that so-called translations differ in regard to their natures, and also to their ends-and therefore necessarily also in regard to the methods of their composition. For instance, the end which the English translator of the Divina Commedia has, or should have, in view is distinctly not that at which he aims who translates Milton into Virgilian hexameters, or Tennyson into Alcaics. In the latter case the result desired is a production such as Virgil or Alcæus might 1 Inferno, v. 95. |