t say. It may be that they do not praise
the Longfellow version because they confessedly had a share in it, yet
this reason does not quite satisfy. Nothing has been more noticeable in
the popular reception of the completed work than the general preference
of unsophisticated readers for those earlier translations thus heartily
praised by Lowell. There has been a general complaint that the later
work does not possess for the English-speaking reader the charm exerted
by the original over all who can read Italian, while those earlier and
fragmentary specimens had certainly possessed something of that charm.

Those favorite versions, it must be remembered, were not the result of
any cooeperated labor, having been written by Professor Longfellow in an
interleaved copy of Dante which he used in the class room. They were
three in number, all from the "Purgatorio" and entitled by him
respectively, "The Celestial Pilot," "The Terrestrial Paradise," and
"Beatrice." They were first published in "Voices of the Night" (1839),
and twenty-eight years had passed before the later versions appeared.
Those twenty-eight years had undoubtedly enhanced in width and depth Mr.
Longfellow's knowledge of the Italian language; their labors and sorrows
had matured the strength of his mind; but it is not so clear that they
had not in some degree diminished its freshness and vivacity, nor is it
clear that the council of friendly critics would be an influence tending
to replace just those gifts.

If a comparison is to be made between the earlier and later renderings,
the best way would doubtless be to place them side by side in parallel
columns; and while it would be inappropriate to present such a
comparison here on any large scale, it may be worth while to take a
passage at random to see the effect of the two methods. Let us take, for
instance, a passage from "Purgatorio," canto xxx. lines 22 and 23. They
are thus in the original:--

"Io vidi gia nel cominciar del giorno
La parte oriental tutta rosata,
E l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno."

The following is Longfellow's translation of 1839, made by the man of
thirty-two:--

"Oft have I seen, at the approach of day,
The orient sky all stained with roseate hues,
And the other heaven with light serene adorned."

The following is the later version, made by the man of sixty, after
ample conference with friendly critics:--

"Ere now have I beheld, as day began,
The eastern hemisp