"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four cantos, in _terza rima_, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the _Divina Commedia_ and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron,[280] and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the _terza rima_ of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto _tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley_,[281] of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to _Caliph Vathek_; so that--if I do not err--this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed and most likely taken in vain. Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_[282] translated into Italian _versi sciolti_,--that is, a poem written in the _Spenserean stanza_ into _blank verse_, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza or the sense. If the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation of his great "Padre Alighier,"[283] I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory[284] in the first canto of the _Inferno_, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question. He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation--their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, Pindemonte, or Arici,[285] should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, where my business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both. THE PROPHECY OF DANTE. CANTO THE FIRST.