Page:Dante and His Circle, with the Italian Poets Preceding Him.djvu/9



ANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI published in 1861 his book The Early Italian Poets, which is the first form of the present book named Dante and his Circle. Ever since its first publication this series of translations has occupied, I think, a somewhat peculiar position; partly as being the only form in which a large portion of the poems here treated are available for English readers; and partly because the Italian compositions have so special a character of their own, and the translator has entered so keenly into their spirit, and has reinforced this with so manifest a poetic tone and savour proper to himself, that the versions have taken rank as a sort of cross between translated and original work. They have been accepted as bringing the English reader as close to the mediæval Italians as he is ever likely to be brought; and also as introducing him to the tone and quality of Rossetti's own mind and hand in poetic production. While they serve as a kind of epilogue to the Italian trecento, they serve likewise as a kind of prologue to Rossetti's personality among English poets. If he had not undertaken the translations, and had not given them the development which they here assume, some substantial