"My parents natives of Lombardy were." "They'll come to blood and then the savage party." "Like as at Palo near the Quarnãro." "I am not Aeneas; I am not Paul." We have exhibited sufficiently the merits of what its author declares to be "perhaps a better translation" than any other. He says that "the whole Divine Comedy of which these ten cantos are a specimen will appear in due time." If the specimen be a fair one, the translation of the "Purgatory" and the "Paradise" will not appear until after the publication of Dr. Carlyle's prose version, for which we may yet have to wait some time. We are confident that so honorable a publishing house as that of Messrs. Ticknor and Fields must have been unaware of the character of a book so full of false pretences, when they allowed their name to be put on the title-page. But to make up for even unconscious participation in such a literary imposition, we trust that they will soon put to press the remainder of Dr. Parsons's excellent translation of Dante's poem, a specimen of which appeared so long since, bearing their imprint. * * * * * _City Poems_. By ALEXANDER SMITH, Author of "A Life Drama, and other Poems." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. On the first appearance of Alexander Smith, criticism became light-headed, and fairly exhausted its whole vocabulary of panegyric in giving him welcome. "There is not a page in this volume on which we cannot find some novel image, _some Shakspearian felicity_ of expression, or some striking simile," said the critic of the "Westminster Review." "Having read these extracts," said another exponent of public opinion, "turn _to any poet you will_, and compare the texture of the composition,--it is a severe test, but you will find that Alexander Smith bears it well." It was observable, however, that all this praise was lavished on what were styled "beauties." Passages and single lines, bricks from the edifice, were extravagantly eulogized; but on turning to the poems, it was found that the poetical lines and passages were not parts of a whole, that the bricks formed no edifice at all. There were no indications of creative genius, no shaping or constructive power, no substance and fibre of individuality, no signs of a great poetical nature, but a splendid anarchy of sensations and faculties. The separate beauties, as the author had heaped and huddled them together, presented a total result of deformity. It was also found, that, striking as some of the images, metaphors, and similes were, they gave little poetic satisfaction or delight. A certain thinness of sentiment, poverty of idea, and shallowness of experience, were not hidden from view, to one who looked sharply through the gorgeous wrappings of words. A small, but sensitive and facile nature, capable of fully expressing itself by the grace of a singularly fluent fancy, with an appetite for beauty rather than a passion for it, with no essential