Soon afterwards they received an invitation to visit O Riou Riou, the reigning sovereign, who had established his residence at Toyai. They repaired thither, and found him a fat, heavy, dirty man, and a prey to unsightly disease. His dwelling was a poor straw-built hut, 25 or 30 feet long, and half as many wide; and the roof covered with cocoa leaves and sea-weed. The same military indications prevailed here as at Kayerooa: guns were mounted to command the shore, and abundance of soldiers paraded in every direction, At a subsequent interview his majesty appeared in the uniform of a colonel of hussars, with a hat like those worn by the marshals of France. From Mr. Young, an Englishman, long domiciliated here, as well as from a talkative, conceited Gascon, who assumed the character of a phy sician, they obtained much information on the politics of the island; and from the indolent and inefficient character of the reigning sovereign, were led to anticipate an approaching convulsion and change of govern

ment.

The period of their arrival was, indeed, peculiarly critical; for it was soon after the death of Tamahaamah, who was long before known to Eu rope by the narrative of Vancouver. The character of this chief excites at once surprise and admiration. By native energy of mind he raised himself and his country from barbarism and ignorance-judiciously turned to advantage the example and assistance of Europeans and Americans-curbed the turbulent spirit of his chiefs established a police, and put a stop to the sanguinary rites of his subjects. He laid also the foundation of a naval power, and formed an army, which he reduced to the most rigorous discipline. His very virtues, however, were tinctured with the savage character. He was severe in his punishments; and actuated with a spirit of conquest, which was not bounded to the Sandwich islands, for he meditated the invasion of the more distant groupes of the Friendly and Society Isles, when death put a period to his career. His memory is cherished with a degree of respect amounting almost to adoration, and his name is

never mentioned without awakening the most lively emotions of grief and regret. This feeling is heightened by the contrast between his heroic character and that of his indolent and inefficient son. He purchased a brig and two fine schooners from the Americans, increased the number of his double or war canoes, built forts, and collected magazines of arms and ammunition; and, at his death, left the sum of 500,000 dollars in his treasury,

It would be unreasonable to expect, from voyagers of the present day, any important addition to that knowledge of these islands which we have derived from Cook, Vancouver, and others. The want of chastity among the womeu is, however, strongly marked; and, from the account of M. Arago, this failing pervades every rank of society, not excepting the wives of the chiefs, who appeared by no means disposed to repel any degree of familiarity. Their system of domestic polity is yet ill understood; but it appears, that the most severe and frequent punishments are inflicted for breaches of the taboo. Their modes of execution are, by dashing out the brains of the offender with a club, or fastening him to a tree and strangling him with a cord passed round the neck.

As if to add to the poignancy of suffering, the criminal is previously subjected to a fast of forty-eight hours. Women are punished with death for eating of bananas, hogs, or cocoa nuts-for tasting food dressed at a fire kindled by a man, or even for smoking a pipe which a man has lighted.

From the Sandwich isles the crew of the Uranie expected to proceed to Otaheite; and they had scarcely put to sea before they revelled in imagination in the delights of that abode of licentious pleasure, but, to their regret and disappointment, their course was directed to New South Wales. On reaching Sydney, our author was surprised to discover the arts and refinements of Europe in a country which, a few years ago, was a mere wilderness, and brought into cultivation by the hands of felons. He speaks in the warmest terms of the attention which he and his fellowvoyagers experienced, but his descriptions offer no novelty to the English reader. We shall therefore

merely observe, that they sailed for Cape Horn; but, on approaching that point, they were shipwrecked on one of the Malouine, or Falkland, islands. Here their voyage of discovery may be said to terminate. After struggling some time with the difficulties of their situation, they were enabled to hire an American vessel, which was employed in the seal fishery at a neighbouring island. They proceeded to Monte Video, where they made a short stay-then

to Rio Janeiro-and, finally, disembarking at Havre, had again the satisfaction of breathing their native air.

We have only to add, that the narrative is illustrated with a series of plates, in the lithographic style, which appear to be spirited and accurate representations; and that the translation, in general, is well executed, though the diction of the ori ginal is occasionally deformed with a little national affectation,

FROM the last of these lines, which we have selected as our motto, some of our readers will perhaps conclude that this book is a jocular performance, or, as it has been termed of late years, a hoax. But it was put into our hands very seriously, with a desire that we should review it; and it is our intention to treat it with all due gravity. The writer tells us in his preface that he has lived in Italy many years, and (to use his own phrase) that "he is likely to continue;" that he has attached himself entirely unto the chief of the celebrated Tuscan triumvirate," and "proposes an historical, philosophical, critical elucidation of his author's sentiments and intentions, because the different works, historical or literary, to which the reader may recur, have too lengthened a way before them to allow of their delaying on the same topics more than more or less cursorily." "The variety, shortness, and independence of the articles" of his work, "would," he says, "render it as fit to be taken up and thrown down, and taken up again, as Montaigne's Essays; not that he supposes any one will be so ungenerous as to suspect him of presuming to compare himself to Montaigne, except merely as to the unconnected nature of the parts of their compositions." In a short

Commentator's Translation, p. 430. account of Dante's writings, he enumerates his "Historical Tracts, in Italian, of which very little now remains" (we believe so, having never before heard of any), and omits the Vita Nuova; which is of the less importance, as all other biographers have noticed it. He then gives us some information, touching Dante himself, which is equally novel and curious; that" of the various remarkable men of his day, whether Italians, French, Germans, Spaniards, or Saracens, there was scarcely one with whom he was not personally acquainted." The writer does not tell us how he found out this; but it is sufficient that he says so. reasons for concluding that Dante was intimate with Marco Polo are so strongly put, that it would be vain to dispute them: "With Marco Polo, the earliest modern who performed a famous voyage of discovery, Dante must have been intimately acquainted, and learned from him many things about the countries beyond the Line, which are not to be found in Polo's book." Nothing indeed is easier to show, if we admit this proof (and who will question it?), that Dante must have been intimately acquainted with all the authors of his own time, and learned from them many things not to be found in their books.

His

London.

- After this account of his author, he proceeds to speak of translations of the Divina Commedia. The one which least dissatisfies him, is the Latin version of Carlo d'Aquino. It is very modest in him to omit his own, as the reader will see by a few specimens, with which he has favoured us in the course of his work In English he is acquainted with two, although he did not know any thing of the existence of either till very lately. "With regard to one of them," he adds, "it is quite unnecessary to notice it; for ramblingly paraphrastic as it is, I believe, if the title page were cut out and the book handed to me, I should not be aware it was intended for a translation of Dante. The other is, indeed, a very different production; I mean that of Mr. Cary. Its fidelity is exemplary, and, although somewhat of a paraphrase, it is far from loose." How happy Mr. Cary must have been at hearing such a sentence from such a judge. Poor easy man! Let no poet or translator confide too much in the first coaxing he receives from his critic. Perhaps the little mouse, that is first stroked by the velvet paws of gri malkin, and then let loose for a moment, expects that it shall be suffered to go about its business, and tell the rest of the brood what a pretty play-fellow it had met with,

-Velouté comme nous, Marqueté, longue queue, une humble con

tenance,

but, alas! the next tap will be a ruder one; then comes a scratch, then a downright rending of its sleek ermine, till at last it is fain to squeak and run for its life. "A very different production-fidelity exemplary-though somewhat of a paraphrase, far from loose." Good; but what follows?

But whatever its literal' merits, it does not give, nor pretend to give, any of the melody of the original. Dante writes in rhyme, and in a measure whose chief merits are pliancy and concision-Mr. Cary in blank verse, imitative of the stateliness and occasional prolixity of Milton. Be it observed, that before Dante, neither terza rima nor blank verse (versi sciolti) existed in Italian, though both now do; and Cesarotti, Alfieri, Parini, Bettinelli, &c. prove that the latter is no less adapted to the genius of the language than the former. Dante might then just as easily have invented blank verse as terza rima, if there was not something in

rhyme which pleased his ear more.› He had begun his poem in Latin heroics, but soon changed both tongue and metre. Who knows how many metres he might have tried, before he decided for terza rima? His smaller poems display a variety of metres. Any of these, or blank verse, were as easy an invention as terza rima. But in choosing this last, he, in my opinion, chose well; for no other seems capable of such variety being alike proper for the highest and the lowest themes, and susceptible of every gradation of sound, to accompany each coour of eloquence, from rapid argument to playful imagery, from expanding tenderness to sarcasm and vehemence, from the sublimest simplicity to magnificence of description. Concision, however, is the where he enters into descriptive details chief peculiarity of Dante's style; even (which is rarely), his expressions are conciser than those of any other writer would have been on a similar occasion: no rhythm then is more unlike his than the Miltonic. Why then imagine that he would have selected it, had he written in English? He might have changed language, yet not ear. If we are to argue from analogy, it will not follow that because he preferred rhyme in his native tongue, he would blank verse in the metre most entirely dissimilar to the ours; and that he would choose in English

one he liked best in Italian. Before Lord

Byron employed terza rima, it might have been objected that there was something in that fine metre not agreeing with the form of our language; but that doubt is now va nished. Perhaps Mr. Haley removed it before; but I cannot speak of his verses, having never seen them. But there is a far more ancient and higher authority for English terza rima than Mr. Haley-authority of which I was not aware till this very morning, the authority of the partial translator and frequent imitator of DanteMilton. His version of the second Psalm is in regular terza rima. P. xxi.

1

few mornings more to inquire into Perhaps if the critic had taken a the matter, he might have found that several of our old writers, as Lord Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Francis Bryan, and Sir Philip Sidney, had used the terza rima long before Milton; and that Gray, in those posthumous papers for which we are so much indebted to Mr. Mathias, has observed that "though the invention has usually been ascribed to Dante, there is a poem (called the Pataffio) extant, written in this very measure, by Ser Brunetto Latini, who was Dante's master, and who died in 1294." Gray adds, that it was probably the invention of the Provençals,

who used it in their Syrvientes (or satires), whence the Italians have commonly called it Serventese. (Vol. ii. p. 21.) What now becomes of the hypothesis, that Dante might just as easily have invented blank verse, and of his having tried many metres before he decided? It might have been mentioned by this writer, in the fairness which he professes towards Mr. Cary, of whom he says, "he is, I believe, a fair antagonist, and I will treat him fairly," that Mr. Cary says not a word of his imagining that Dante would have used blank verse had he written in English. He merely uses it himself; but it does not follow, that because a translator finds it convenient to use a certain measure, he must therefore suppose that the poet whom he translates would have used the same. An original writer is master of what he shall say next, and has sometimes a happy thought suggested to him by the rhyme it self. The translator has no such advantage, and will be apt to employ the metre that will leave him most at liberty to make choice of such words as shall best convey the sense of his original. Mr. Cary might have managed better if he had possessed the ingenuity of the learned commentator. But he shall tell his own tale. "Long before seeing Mr. Cary's translation, I had begun to attempt one conformably to the principles just disclosed. That translation of mine I have since suppressed; yet not until two cantos were printed, as well as the comments on them." He then goes on to clear himself from the "impeachment of being, in this, an imitator of Lord Byron, and to apologize for the points in which his varies a little from that of Lord Byron's." Let who will impeach him, we will not; let who will refuse his apology, we will accept it. Who, indeed, could be so hard as to deny him any thing after hearing his candid confession, in the following words? "The naked truth is best. About six years since, I turned five cantos of Dante precisely into the same measure which is in the Prophecy of Dante, but afterwards found it so heavy that I renounced it." Here it is natural to ask, if the writer, with the knowledge of these principles which he has disclosed, and after having lived so many years in Italy, found

the measure so heavy that he re nounced it, after going through five cantos; this very measure which was fixed on by Dante (perhaps after trying many metres) for his hundred cantos, should he not have had a little compassion on Mr. Cary, who has never been in Italy, nor ever had "this writer's principles disclosed to him?" Where we see one virtue, we expect to find another. Of want of sincerity no one will accuse our commentator, when he thus accounts for his failure: "The fault," says he, "was possibly entirely my own; but also I could not remedy it." The fault his own? and why not Dante's, who tried so many metres, and might as well have invented blank verse, but chose this, which in his own language is so fumous for melody, and pliancy, and concision, but which an ingenious English gentleman, who has lived in Italy many years, finds so heavy, that after translating five cantos he renounces it? A poet, who took such ungenerous advantages in his own language, did not deserve to be translated. But what will not the art of ingenious men accomplish? For though the commentator (or hears he rather the translator?) owns that the fault was possibly entirely his own, but also he could not remedy it, yet in the very next sentence he tells us that he did remedy it, and in what manner. "Without troubling others," says he, "I meditated on the matter; and the consequence was, that I at last determined to allow myself the liberty of varying my lines from eight to ten syllables, instead of giving them all the fine heroic complement; as well as of using double rhymes at pleasure. Even his lordship uses them." Here one scarcely knows which to commend most, the forbearance in not troubling others, the magnanimous resolution not to give all the lines the fine heroic complement, or the politeness to his lordship. The result of this solitary meditation, however, was, that the terza rima should be used with verses from eight to ten syllables, and double rhymes at pleasure, which even his lordship uses. But this was not the whole of our author's invention when he meditated upon the matter; for with him a full heroic line answers to the Alexandrine; that is, the English verse of five feet answers to