story been preserved only in the form recorded by Boccaccio, it would
have been lost in its minor details of history; whereas Dante has
glorified it.

By the very fact that Dante places the two lovers in the circle of the
Lustful, it is clear that he realized the enormity of their sin.
The theory that his friendship with Guido Novella, the nephew of
Francesca, made Dante refrain from entering fully into the incident,
will not hold, when it is remembered that the cantos of the Inferno
were written in 1300, seventeen years before the poet reached Ravenna,
and accepted the hospitality of the Polenta house. Dante's infinite
compassion is, therefore, the cause for the compressed poetry of this
famous passage.

Dante's Francesca lines have been infinitely translated. Longfellow is
conscientious; Byron chafes to be freed of the original Italian, and
his lines are irksome; Rossetti sees and feels, but he is laboured.
Dante, infinitely translated, remains supreme.

The poems on this ideal love legend are of infinite variety. Tassoni
describes Paolo, the warrior, consumed with ravishing love, "shrunk
with misery;" he fails to reach the youthful passion, and is as
mediævally chivalric as is Chaucer in "The Knightes Tale" of Palamon
and Arcite. Leigh Hunt resorts to stilted narrative and description.

Byron once thought to write a drama on this subject; had he done so,
Silvio Pellico might have had a formidable rival. More or less, all
the playwrights have gone to Italian history, and the more exact they
became, the more gross the situation. F. Marion Crawford fell on this
rock of accuracy, when he wrote his Francesca play for Mme. Sarah