of execution in this work,
and accept it as one which, together with Mr. Longfellow's version of
the whole of Dante's _Divina Commedia_, and Mr. Norton's translation of
the _Vita Nuova_, will make the present year memorable in our
literature. It does not necessarily stand in antagonism to works
executed in a spirit entirely different, and we shall make no comparison
of it with the "Inferno" by Mr. Longfellow, the admirers of which will
be among the first to feel its characteristic and very striking
excellences.

In substituting the decasyllabic quatrain for the triple rhyme of the
Italian, we suppose Dr. Parsons desired rather to please the reader's
ear with a familiar stanza, than to avoid the difficulties (exaggerated,
we think, by critics) of the _terza rima_, and he could certainly have
chosen no more felicitous form after once departing from that of his
original. He has almost re-created the stanza for his purpose, giving it
new movement, and successfully adapting to the exigencies of dialogue
and of narrative what has hitherto chiefly been associated with elegiac
and didactic poetry. Something of this may be seen in the following
passages (from the description of the transit through the frozen circle
of Caina), which moreover appear to us among the best sustained of the
version.

"And as a frog squats croaking from a stream,
With nose put forth, what time the village maid
Oft in her slumber doth of gleaning dream,
Stood in the ice there every doleful shade.
Livid as far as where shame paints the cheek,
And doomed their faces downward still to hold.
Chattering like storks, their weeping eyes bespeak
Their aching hearts, their mouths the biting cold."

"A thousand visages I saw, by cold
Turned to dog-faces; horror chills me through
Whenever of those frozen fords I think.
And as we nearer to the centre drew,
Towards which all bodies by their weight must sink,
There, as I shivered in the eternal chill,
Trampling among the heads, it happed, by luck,
Or destiny--or, it may be, my will--
Hard in the face of one my foot I struck.
Weeping he cried, 'What brings thee bruising us?
Unless on me fresh vengeance thou wouldst pile
For Mont' Aperti, why torment me thus?'
And I: 'My Master, wait for me awhile,
That I through him may set one doubt at rest;
Then, if thou bid me hasten on, I will.'