INTRODUCTION.

So many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new
one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are
in verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of
a transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form's sake,
and the new form is itself different from the original. The
conditions of verse in different languages vary so widely as to
make any versified translation of a poem but an imperfect
reproduction of the archetype. It is like an imperfect mirror
that renders but a partial likeness, in which essential features
are blurred or distorted. Dante himself, the first modern critic,
declared that "nothing harmonized by a musical bond can be
transmuted from its own speech without losing all its sweetness
and harmony," and every fresh attempt at translation affords a
new proof of the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits
its own special genius in its poetic forms. Even when they are
closely similar in rhythmical method their poetic effect is
essentially different, their individuality is distinct. The
hexameter of the Iliad is not the hexameter of the Aeneid. And if
this be the case in respect to related forms, it is even more
obvious in respect to forms peculiar to one language, like the
terza rima of the Italian, for which it is impossible to find a
satisfactory equivalent in another tongue.

If, then, the attempt be vain to reproduce the form or to
represent its effect in a translation, yet the substance of a
poem may have such worth that it deserves to be known by readers
who must read it in their own tongue or not at all. In this case
the aim of the translator should he to render the substance