metrical ones attainable. They suffice for them, in some respects, less
than for Dante, the manner in their case being of more importance to
the effect. But with all due respect to such translators as Harrington,
Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto and Tasso, even in manner.
Harrington, the gay "godson" of Queen Elizabeth, is not always unlike
Ariosto; but when not in good spirits he becomes as dull as if her
majesty had frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit, and a scholar; yet
he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of his original into
inversion and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant and even poetical,
did an unfortunate thing for Tasso, when he gave an additional line and
a number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza already tending to the
superfluous. Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to
a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has
seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins
of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love
of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below
criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had
no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get
any friend who had, to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or
Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any
of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted; and we
have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken.
I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the
public what I would have had a friend do for myself.

The _Critical and Biographical Notices_ I did not intend to make so long
at first; but the interest grew upon me; and I hope the reader will
regard some of them--Dante's and Tasso's in particular--as being
"stories" themselves, after their kind,--"stories, alas, too true;"
"romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which is