Chapter XXVII: Introduction: To Francesca of Rimini

The MS. of "a _literal_ translation, word for word (versed like the original), of the episode of Francesca of Rimini" (Letter March 23, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 421), was sent to Murray from Ravenna, March 20, 1820 (_ibid_., p. 419), a week after Byron had forwarded the MS. of the _Prophecy of Dante_. Presumably the translation had been made in the interval by way of illustrating and justifying the unfamiliar metre of the "Dante Imitation." In the letter which accompanied the translation he writes, "Enclosed you will find, _line for line_, in _third rhyme_ (_terza rima_,) of which your British Blackguard reader as yet understands nothing, Fanny of Rimini. You know that she was born here, and married, and slain, from Cary, Boyd, and such people already. I have done it into _cramp_ English, line for line, and rhyme for rhyme, to try the possibility. You had best append it to the poems already sent by last three posts."

In the matter of the "British Blackguard," that is, the general reader, Byron spoke by the card. Hayley's excellent translation of the three first cantos of the _Inferno_ (_vide ante_, "Introduction to the _Prophecy of Dante_," p. 237), which must have been known to a previous generation, was forgotten, and with earlier experiments in _terza rima_, by Chaucer and the sixteenth and seventeenth century poets, neither Byron nor the British public had any familiar or definite acquaintance. But of late some interest had been awakened or revived in Dante and the _Divina Commedia_.

Cary's translation--begun in 1796, but not published as a whole till 1814--had met with a sudden and remarkable success. "The work, which had been published four years, but had remained in utter obscurity, was at once eagerly sought after. About a thousand copies of the first edition, that remained on hand, were immediately disposed of; in less than three months a new edition was called for." Moreover, the _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh Reviews_ were loud in its praises (_Memoir of H. F. Cary_, 1847, ii. 28). Byron seems to have thought that a fragment of the _Inferno_, "versed like the original," would challenge comparison with Cary's rendering in blank verse, and would lend an additional interest to the "Pulci Translations, and the Dante Imitation." _Dîs aliter visum_, and Byron's translation of the episode of _Francesca of Rimini_, remained unpublished till it appeared in the pages of _The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, 1830, ii. 309-311. (For separate translations of the episode, see _Stories of the Italian Poets_, by Leigh Hunt, 1846, i. 393-395, and for a rendering in blank verse by Lord [John] Russell, see _Literary Souvenir_, 1830, pp. 285-287.)

FRANCESCA DA RIMINI.

FRANCESCA OF RIMINI[348]

FROM THE INFERNO OF DANTE.