all the stanzas by carrying the echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our Spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines.  Whether stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly about the terza rima?  To us it seems not deserving of admiration for its own sake; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original poems.  We are not aware that Dante’s example has been followed by any poet of note in Italy. Terza rima keeps the attention suspended too long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the last rhyme.  The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and running ahead.  It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the first rhymers of an uncultivated age.  But Dante used it for his great song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the “Divina Commedia.”

Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,—­in order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,—­to preserve the triple rhyme?  Not having in English a corresponding number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to transpositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to compass the meaning and the poetry?  Place the passages already cited from Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised to see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the Italian thought and to English idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is.  His harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so skillfully does he wear it.  If we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited from the “Inferno,” or with those from the “Paradiso,” in Mr. Longfellow’s less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again manifest.  To enable our readers to compare the translations with the original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the three versions, of the latter part of the Francesca story, from Canto V. of the “Inferno:”—­

  “Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io,
    E cominciai:  Francesca, i tuoi martiri
  A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio. 
    Ma dimmi:  al tempo de’ dolci sospiri,
  A che, e come concedette Amore
    Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri? 
  Ed ella a me:  nessun maggior dolore,
    Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
  Nella miseria, e cio sa ’l tuo dottore. 
    Ma se a conoscer la prima radice
  Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,
    Faro come colui che piange, e dice. 
  Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto
    Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse. 
  Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto. 
    Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
  Quella lettura, e scolorocci ’l viso: