On another occasion the poet met a churl driving before him a mob of donkeys, and enlivening his wearisome journey by singing also snatches of the divine poem. But, very naturally, he would intersperse his songs with an occasional pricking of the haunches of his asinine fellow-travellers with the goad, and the shout of _arri, arri_--the Italian _g'long, g'long_. Dante at once visited the fellow's back with an earnest blow, and cried: "That _arri, arri_, I never put it in that verse!" The poor _asinaro_ shrugged his shoulders, and darted to one side, not well pleased with the uncouth salutation; but when at a safe distance, ignorant as he was of the cause of the blow and of the man who had inflicted it, he thrust his tongue out, and said, "Take that," an indecent act even for an Italian boor. Dante replied: "I would not give mine for a hundred of thine!" What the smith and the drover did, in their own way, and in Dante's time, has been repeated down to our days. Volumes might be filled with merely the titles of essays, treatises, and theories, at times ingenious, seldom interesting, always betraying the conceit of the writer. Editions innumerable are crammed with interpretations conflicting with each other, and by which the sense of the poet has been cruelly distorted. We, who have been reared in the deepest reverence for Dante's orthodoxy, have always felt indignant at the irreligious and unphilosophical inordinations to which the _Divina Commedia_ has been made to afford foundation and development. For the nonce we mean to deal with translations, yet not in a general or comprehensive treatise; for to treat of all English translations of Dante, down to Sir J. F. W. Herschel's, the latest of all, would carry us over fields too extensive and uninviting. We have been led to beg for a corner of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, in order to introduce to its readers what, after a close and careful study, we deem the best of all translations of Dante. We allude to _The First Canticle (Inferno) of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri_. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra & Co. 1867. That Mr. Parsons possesses the spirit of a poet, no one who has read ever so little of his original compositions will gainsay. Whatever he writes has the true ring; there is nothing transcendental in him, and no mannerism; his sentiments are spontaneous, and flow into his diction with a naturalness that takes hold of the heart of the reader at once, like a peaceful streamlet mingling its waters with kindred waves. Opening a collection of his poems at random, we do not hesitate to transcribe, without any studied choice, what first offers itself to our eye. He writes on the death of his friend, the sculptor Crawford, and thus he suddenly gives vent to his feelings: