And then comes Professor Courtney Langdon[3] with another. One of his ideas seems to me just, though debatable--namely, that any modern man has the right to find anything in Dante that he can find, to derive the sort of joy and wisdom that suit him, the reader, whether or not Dante would recognize that reader's meaning. The poet exists for our benefit and, like the Bible, does not forbid but justifies the multitude of sects and individual expositors. That idea alone is worth Professor Langdon's labor, and it will be interesting to see how he develops it. Unfortunately, his translation is worse than useless. He simply has not the gift of English verse. His own verses, prefixed to the several canticles, are absurd doggerel; they remind one of Longfellow's lovely sonnets (the best poems he ever wrote) only by their position of naive rivalry with the splendor that follows. And, what is more strange, Professor Langdon writes abominable prose, such assaults upon the ear as "verse's rhythm" and "Divine Comedy's last part." If the poet exists for us, in English or Italian, one of the things to learn from him is how to write. [3] The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary. By Courtney Langdon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 3 vols. The poet exists for us. That is an excellent idea. It is our privilege to take what we enjoy and reject what we do not like or understand. I cannot be interested in Dante's ethics, which interested him so profoundly and is the bone of his thought. His "stern indignant moral," as Carlyle called it, is for me no part of the beauty of the "mystic song." I cannot regard without suspicion, even in a New Englander, Norton's statement to Dr. Dinsmore that the quality of the _Commedia_, other than its beauty, which attracted him to Dante was "his powerful exposition of moral penalties and rewards." Other than its beauty? What does that mean? If the qualities of the _Commedia_ can be separated (Dante happened to believe that they can not be), let us throw the ethics, the penalties, and rewards to the four winds. Let us keep as much as we can grasp of the beauty of the episodes, the images, the phrases, the structure, whatever gives delight.