In 1839 Mr. Longfellow published five passages from the _Purgatorio_, translated with a rigorous adhesion to the words and idioms of the original. Coming out in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,--Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and expression? Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, had answered no for Greek and Latin, Coleridge for German, Fairfax and Rose and Cary for Italian. But if Mr. Longfellow could translate the whole of the _Divina Commedia_ as he had translated these five passages, great as some of these names were, it was evident that the lovers of poetry would call for new translations of all the great poets. This he has now done. The whole poem is before us, with its fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, the English answering line for line and word for word to the original Italian. We purpose to show, by a careful comparison of test-passages with corresponding passages of Cary, what the American poet has done for the true theory of translation. It is evident that, while both translators have nominally the same object in view, they follow different paths in their endeavors to reach it; or, in other words, that they come to their task with very different theories of translation, and very different ideas of the true meaning of faithful rendering. Translation, according to Mr. Cary, consists in rendering the author's idea without a strict adherence to the author's words. According to Mr. Longfellow, the author's words form a necessary accompaniment of his idea, and must, wherever the idioms of the two languages admit of it, be rendered by their exact equivalents. The following passage, from the twenty-eighth canto of the _Purgatorio_, will illustrate our meaning:-- "In questa altezza che tutta è disciolta Nell'aer vivo, tal moto percuote, E fa sonar la selva perch' è folta." Literally, In this height which is all detached In the living air, such motion strikes, And makes the wood resound because it is thick. Such are the words of Dante line by line. Let us now see how Cary renders them:-- "Upon the summit, which on every side To visitation of the impassive air Is open, doth that motion strike, and makes Beneath its sway the umbrageous wood resound."