Note 160 — VI. LITERARY CRITICISM.

"It is generally better to read ten lines of any poet in the original language, however painfully, than ten cantos of a translation. But an exception may be made in favor of Cary's 'Dante.' If no poet ever was liable to lose more in translation, none was ever so carefully translated; and I hardly know whether most to admire the rigid fidelity, or the sweet and solemn harmony, of Cary's verse," etc. See the note to the "Stones of Venice," at the above-named page.