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 coöperation 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 following is the passage: "There will never be an endurable translation of Homer, unless its words are chosen with skill and are full of variety, of freshness, and of charm. It is also essential that the diction should be as antique, as simple, as are the manners, the events, and the personages portrayed. With our modern style everything attitudinizes in Homer, and his heroes seem fantastic figures which personate the grave and proud."{95} {92 _Life_, ii. 15.} {93 I here follow the condensed version of Mr. W. P. Andrews, (_Atlantic Monthly_, lxvi., 733).} {94 _The New England Poets_, p. 138.}