"
Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the
superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any
other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so
high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; what
though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and
the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied
domains. The traveler, even if he come directly from wondering
at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest
delight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher.
But it is time to speak of Dante in English.
"It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might
discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to
transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet."
Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful "Defense of
Poetry." But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and
of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet?
And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by
deprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer
though so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture
of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and
Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through
which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would
incidently have learnt from Lempriere.
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