With the opinion expressed in the first clause of this extract few will disagree. Lady Dacre, indeed, might have extended her sentence to other poets besides Dante, and, it may be said, to poets in general of any marked eminence. Of these poets, or of any save those of the second or third class, to which may be added certain of the satirical and didactic category, it is not too much to assert that nothing that could be called a sufficient translation has yet been accomplished. By translation is here meant not a mere rendering, however faithful and intelligent, of the words, phrases, and plain meaning, but a transfusion, by the translator’s own genius, of the spirit of the original into the ordinary diction, idioms and peculiarities of another language. Pope and Dryden have, perhaps, arrived nearest this result; but, too great themselves, they have so imbued their greater originals with their own spirit—a spirit in many respects differing widely from the classical, that their versions may with more justice be called paraphrases than translations. Still, if there are degrees of impossibility, Dante is fully entitled to a place in the first class of such impossibilities. To Lady Dacre’s assertion, however, of the facility which Cary ought to have derived from his use of blank verse, exception may well be taken. Although in some cases, as in translating Petrarch, it may be difficult, and in others, as in rendering certain classic metres, impossible, to reproduce in the alien language the exact form of verse employed in the original (and with the form of his verse, it must be observed, the spirit of the poet is always indissolubly connected), yet it is necessary to a good and true translation that this course should be adopted wherever practicable. Dante is a rhymed poet, and the system both of his rhymes and of his verse is by no means uncommon in English poetry; to none, it might be supposed, more familiar than to Lady Dacre. For this reason alone it would appear that if Dante, of all poets, is to be clothed anew in English garb, the most fitting attire for him would not be blank verse. These remarks are merely by the way, our work is not particularly concerned with poetry, but with the life of Panizzi, who was then (1829) engaged upon his “_Orlando Innamorato di Bojardo: Orlando Furioso di Ariosto: with an Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians; Memoirs, and Notes by Antonio Panizzi_.” 9 vols. 8vo. London, 1830-34. [Illustration: Ariosto] The first volume of this edition, dedicated to his benefactor Roscoe, contains a dissertation on Italian Romantic Poetry, with analyses of the “_Teseide_” of Boccaccio, the “_Morgante_” of Luigi Pulci, and the “_Mambriano_” of Francesco Bello, besides other Italian romantic epics. The second volume is prefaced by a memoir of Bojardo, with an essay making him full amends for the long usurpation of his fame by his adaptor Berni. It also contains a life of Ariosto.