Christian and Cacciaguida I became."

_Longfellow_

"Florence, within her ancient limit-mark,
Which calls her still to matin prayers and noon,
Was chaste and sober, and abode in peace,
She had no armlets and no head-tires then;
No purfled dames; no zone, that caught the eye
More than the person did. Time was not yet,
When at his daughter's birth the sire grew pale,
For fear the age and dowry should exceed,
On each side, just proportion. House was none
Void of its family: nor yet had come
Sardanapalus, to exhibit feats
Of chamber prowess. Montemalo yet
O'er our suburban turret rose; as much
To be surpassed in fall, as in its rising.
I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone;
And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks,
His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw
Of Nerli, and of Vecchio, well content
With unrobed jerkin; and their good dames handling
The spindle and the flax: O happy they!
Each sure of burial in her native land,
And none left desolate abed for France.
One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it
With sounds that lulled the parent's infancy:
Another, with her maidens, drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.
A Salterello and Cianghella we
Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would
A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
In such composed and seemly fellowship,
Such faithful and such fair equality,
In so sweet household, Mary at my birth
Bestowed me, called on with loud cries; and there,
In your old baptistery, I was made
Christian at once and Cacciaguida."--_Cary._

It would be easy to extend our quotations; but we have given enough of
Mr. Longfellow's translation to show with what conceptions of duty to
the original he came to his task, and how perfectly that duty has been
performed. According to his theory, then, as we gather it from these
volumes, translation is not paraphrase, is not interpretation, is not
imitation, but is the rigorous rendering of word for word, so far as the
original difference of idioms permits. Its basis is truth to the form as
well as to the thought, to the letter as well as to the spirit, of the
text. The translator is like the messengers of the Bible and Homer, who
repeat word for word the message that has been c