,
where one strives to make the translation identical with the original;
so that one is not instead of the other, but in the place of the other.
This sort of translation ... 'approaches the interlinear version, and
makes the understanding of the original a much easier task; thus we are
led into the original,--yes, even driven in; and herein the great merit
of this kind of translation lies.'"{93}

It may be doubted, however, whether Longfellow, in his remarkable paper
"On the Translation of Faust" even if left to himself in making his
version, could ever have reached the highest point attained by Goethe,
from the mere difference between the two languages with which he and his
original had to deal. The charm of Longfellow's earlier versions is,
after all, an English charm, and perhaps the quality of Dante can no
more be truthfully transmuted into this than we can transmute the charms
of a spring morning into those of a summer afternoon, or violets into
roses. Goethe, it is well known, took for his model as to the language
of "Faust" the poetry of Hans Sachs, Longfellow's "cobbler bard;" and
Dante's terse monosyllables were based upon the language of the people,
which he first embodied in art. To mellow its refreshing brevities would
perhaps be to destroy it, and that which Mr. Andrews finely says of the
"Faust" may be still more true of the "Divina Commedia," that it "must
remain, after all, the enchanted palace; and the bodies and the bones of
those who in other days strove to pierce its encircling hedge lie
scattered thickly about it." So Mr. W. C. Lawton, himself an experienced
translator from the Greek, says of Longfellow's work, "His great version
is but a partial success, for it essays the unattainable."{94} But if it
be possible to win this success, it is probably destined to be done by
one translator working singly and not in direct cooeperation with others,
however gifted or accomplished. Every great literary work needs
criticism from other eyes during its progress. Nevertheless it will
always remain doubtful whether any such work, even though it be a
translation only, can be satisfactorily done by joint labor.

After all, when others have done their best, it is often necessary to
fall back upon the French Joubert for the final touch of criticism; and
in his unequalled formula for translating Homer, we find something not
absolutely applicable to Dantean translation, yet furnishing much food
for thought. The foll