fully, exactly, and with as close a correspondence to the tone
and style of the original as is possible between prose and
poetry. Of the charm, of the power of the poem such a translation
can give but an inadequate suggestion; the musical bond was of
its essence, and the loss of the musical bond is the loss of the
beauty to which form and substance mutually contributed, and in
which they were both alike harmonized and sublimated. The
rhythmic life of the original is its vital spirit, and the
translation losing this vital spirit is at best as the dull
plaster cast to the living marble or the breathing bronze. The
intellectual substance is there; and if the work be good,
something of the emotional quality may be conveyed; the
imagination may mould the prose as it moulded the verse,--but,
after all, "translations are but as turn-coated things at best,"
as Howell said in one of his Familiar Letters.

No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than
the Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary
distinction, no poem has an intellectual and emotional substance
more independent of its metrical form. Its complex structure, its
elaborate measure and rhyme, highly artificial as they are, are
so mastered by the genius of the poet as to become the most
natural expression of the spirit by which the poem is inspired;
while at the same time the thought and sentiment embodied in the
verse is of such import, and the narrative of such interest, that
they do not lose their worth when expressed in the prose of
another tongue; they still haye power to quicken imagination, and
to evoke sympathy.

In English there is an excellent prose translation of the