Sometimes the temptation to seize him and shake him was too strong for poor human nature. But I always regretted it afterwards. When I saw him asleep in his tiny bed, with one tear dried on his plump velvety cheek and two little mice-teeth visible through the parted lips, I could n't help thinking what a little bit of a fellow he was, with his funny little fingers and his funny little nails; and it did n't seem to me that he was the sort of person to be pitched into by a great strong man like me.

"When Johnny grows older," I used to say to his mother, "I'll reason with him."

Now I don't know when Johnny will grow old enough to be reasoned with. When I reflect how hard it is to reason with wise grown-up people, if they happen to be unwilling to accept your view of matters, I am inclined to be very patient with Johnny, whose experience is rather limited, after all, though he is six years and a half old, and naturally wants to know why and wherefore. Somebody says something about the duty of "blind obedience." I can't expect Johnny to have more wisdom than Solomon, and to be more philosophic than the philosophers.

At times, indeed, I have been led to expect this from him. He has shown a depth of mind that warranted me in looking for anything. At times he seems as if he were a hundred years old. He has a quaint, bird-like way of cocking his head on one side, and asking a question that appears to be the result of years of study. If I could answer some of those questions, I should solve the darkest mysteries of life and death. His inquiries, however, generally have a grotesque flavor. One night, when the mosquitoes were making lively raids on his person, he appealed to me, suddenly: How does the moon feel when a skeeter bites it?" To his meditative mind, the broad, smooth surface of the moon presented a temptation not to be resisted by any stray skeeter.

66

I freely confess that Johnny is now and then too much for me. I wish I

could read him as cleverly as he reads me. He knows all my weak points; he sees right through me, and makes me feel that I am a helpless infant in his adroit hands. He has an argumentative, oracular air, when things have gone wrong, which always upsets my dignity. Yet how cunningly he uses his power! It is only in the last extremity that he crosses his legs, puts his hands into his trousers-pockets, and argues the case with me. One day last week he was very near coming to grief. By my directions, kindling-wood and coal are placed every morning in the library grate, in order that I may have a fire the moment I return at night. Master Johnny must needs apply a lighted match to this arrangement early in the forenoon. The fire was not discovered until the blower was one mass of red-hot iron, and the wooden mantelpiece was smoking with the intense heat.

When I came home, Johnny was led from the store-room, where he had been imprisoned from an early period, and where he had employed himself in eating about two dollars' worth of preserved pears.

"Johnny," said I, in as severe a tone as one could use in addressing a person whose forehead glistened with syrup,— "Johnny, don't you remember that I have always told you never to meddle with matches?"

It was something delicious to see Johnny trying to remember. He cast one eye meditatively up to the ceiling, then he fixed it abstractedly on the canary-bird, then he rubbed his ruffled brows with a sticky hand; but really, for the life of him, he could n't recall any injunctions concerning matches.

"I can't, papa, truly, truly," said Johnny at length. "I guess I must have forgot it."

"Well, Johnny, in order that you may not forget it in future — "

Here Johnny was seized with an idea. He interrupted me..

"I'll tell you what you do, papa, you just put it down in writin'.”

With the air of a man who has set

friendly overtures of battle to Johnny, who, oddly enough, seemed indisposed to encourage his advances. Then Barnabee began a series of petty persecutions, which had continued up to the day of the fight.

On the morning of that eventful day the Barnabee Boy appeared in the school-yard with a small go-cart. After running down on Johnny several times with this useful vehicle, he captured Johnny's cap, filled it with sand, and dragged it up and down the yard triumphantly in the go-cart. This made the General very angry, of course, and he took an early opportunity of kicking over the triumphal car, in doing which he kicked one of the wheels so far into space that it has not been seen since.

This brought matters to a crisis. The battle would have taken place then and there; but at that moment the schoolbell rang, and the gladiators were obliged to give their attention to Smith's Speller. But a gloom hung over the morning's exercises, a gloom that was not dispelled in the back row, when the Barnabee Boy stealthily held up to Johnny's vision a slate, whereon was inscribed this fearful message:

Johnny got it "put down in writin'" this time!

After a hasty glance at the slate, the General went on with his studies composedly enough. Eleven o'clock came, and with it came recess, and with recess the inevitable battle.

Now I do not intend to describe the details of this brilliant action, for the sufficient reason that, though there were seven young gentlemen (connected with the Primary School) on the field as war correspondents, their accounts of the engagement are so contradictory as to be utterly worthless. On one point they all agree, that the contest was sharp, short, and decisive. The truth is, the General is a quick, wiry, experienced old hero; and it did n't take him long to rout the Barnabee Boy, who was in reality a coward, as all bullies and tyrants ever have been, and always will be.

I don't approve of boys fighting; I don't defend Johnny; but if the General wants an extra ration or two of preserved pear, he shall have it!

I am well aware that, socially speaking, Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know that I have brought him up badly, and that there is not an unmarried man or woman in the United States who wouldn't have brought him up very differently. It's a great pity that the only people who know how to manage children never have any! At the same time, Johnny is not a black sheep all over. He has some white spots. His sins if wiser folks had no greater!

are the result of too much animal life. They belong to his evanescent youth, and will pass away; but his honesty, his generosity, his bravery, belong to his character, and are enduring qualities. The quickly crowding years will tame him. A good large pane of glass, or a seductive bell-knob, ceases in time to have attractions for the most reckless spirit. And I am quite confident that Johnny will be a great statesman, or a valorous soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen, after he has got over being A Young Desperado.

Trans

The First Canticle [Inferno] of the Divine
Comedy of DANTE ALIGHIERI.
lated by THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.
Boston: De Vries, Ibarra, and Company.

WHILE we must own that we have no sympathy with the theory of free translation, we recognize the manifold merits of execution in this work, and accept it as one which, together with Mr. Longfellow's version of the whole of Dante's Divina Commedia, and Mr. Norton's translation of the Vita Nuova, will make the present year memorable in our literature. It does not necessarily stand in antagonism to works executed in a spirit entirely different, and we shall make no comparison of it with the "Inferno" by Mr. Longfellow, the admirers of which will be among the first to feel its characteristic and very striking excellences.

In substituting the decasyllabic quatrain for the triple rhyme of the Italian, we suppose Dr. Parsons desired rather to please the reader's ear with a familiar stanza, than to avoid the difficulties (exaggerated, we think, by critics) of the terza rima, and he could certainly have chosen no more felicitous form after once departing from that of his original. He has almost re-created the stanza for his purpose, giving it new movement, and successfully adapting to the exigencies of dialogue and of narrative what has hitherto chiefly been associated with elegiac and didactic poetry. Something of this may be seen in the following passages (from the description of the transit through the frozen circle of Caïna), which moreover appear to us among the best sustained of the version.

"And as a frog squats croaking from a stream,

With nose put forth, what time the village maid Oft in her slumber doth of gleaning dream, Stood in the ice there every doleful shade.. Livid as far as where shame paints the cheek, And doomed their faces downward still to hold, Chattering like storks, their weeping eyes bespeak

Their aching hearts, their mouths the biting cold."

"A thousand visages I saw, by cold Turned to dog-faces; horror chills me through Whenever of those frozen fords I think. And as we nearer to the centre drew, Towards which all bodies by their weight must

sink,

My leader stopped; and I the shade addressed Who kept full bitterly blaspheming still, 'Say, who art thou whose tongue so foully speaks?' Nay, who art thou that walk'st the withering air Of Antenora, smiting others' cheeks That, wert thou living, 't were too much to bear?' 'Living I am; and thou, if craving fame, Mayst count it precious,' — this was my reply, — That I with other notes record thy name.' He answered thus: Far other wish have I. Trouble me now no longer, get thee gone : Thine is cold flattery in this waste of Hell.' At this his hindmost hairs I fastened on, And cried, 'Thy name! I'll force thee now to tell, Or not one hair upon thy head shall grow.' He answered thus: Although thou pluck me bare,

I'll neither tell my name, nor visage show; Nay, though a thousand times thou rend my hair.'

"I held his tresses in my fingers wound,

And more than one tuft had I twitched away
As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a
hound;

When one cried out, What ails thee, Bocca?
say,-

Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws, But thou must bark too? What fiend pricks

thee now?'

'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, re

late;

But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again,

Mention him too so ready with his prate."

The encounter of Dante with Farinata and Cavalcante in their fiery tombs is also painted with such animated and fortunate strokes that we must reproduce some of them here:

"O Tuscan! thou who com'st with gentle speech, Through Hell's hot city, breathing from the earth,

Stop in this place one moment, I beseech: Thy tongue betrays the country of thy birth, Of that illustrious land I know thee sprung, Which in my day perchance I somewhat vexed.' Forth from one vault these sudden accents rung, So that I trembling stood with fear perplexed. Then as I closer to my master drew,

'Turn back! what dost thou?' he exclaimed in haste;

'See! Farinata rises to thy view;

Now mayst behold him upward from his waist.'

"Full in his face already I was gazing,

While his front lowered, and his proud bosom
swelled,

As though even there, amid his burial blazing,
The infernal realm in high disdain he held."

In this scene, however, the radical defect of Dr. Parsons's work appears: it is unequal, and unsustained even in some of its best parts. It seems scarcely credible that the poet who could produce the grand lines just given, could also mar the whole effect of the father's frantic appeal to know if his son Guido be no longer alive, by putting in his mouth the melodramatic words,

"Su la marina dove 'l Po descende

Per aver pace co' seguaci sui."

Indeed, we have to confess that the present is on the whole not a satisfactory translation of the episode of Francesca da Rimini. The inscription on the gate of hell, also, is rendered in a manner scarcely to be called successful, and not bearing comparison with that of the other rhyming translators, Ford, Wright, and Cayley. As to the beginning of the seventh canto, we must think that Dr. Parsons was chiefly moved by the prevailing sentiment of mankind to translate

into

"Pape Satan! pape Satan aleppe!"

"Ho! Satan! Popes-more Popes-head Satan here !"

These and other blemishes arrest the most casual glance. The merits of any work are harder to prove than its faults, though they are quite as deeply felt; and, as we have already intimated, it is the misfortune of Dr. Parsons that some of his greatest defects are in passages otherwise the most generally successful. There are probably few pages of the translation which do not offend by some lapse; but at the same time there is no page which will not command admiration by sublime and striking lines. We think the whole of the following passage from the thirteenth canto (it is the well-known description of the sentient wood into which the self-violent are turned) has a peculiar strength and dignity:

"Amid the branches of this dismal grove,

Their loathsome nests the brutal Harpies build,
Who from the Strophades the Trojans drove
With woful auguries erelong fulfilled.

Huge wings they have, men's faces, human
throats,

Feet armed with claws, vast bellies clothed with plumes:

From those strange trees they pour their doleful

notes.

'Now, ere thou further penetrate these glooms,' Said my good master, thou shouldst understand Thou 'rt in the second circlet, and shalt be, Until thou come upon the horrid sand. Give good heed then more wonders thou shalt

see,

Yea, to confirm all stories I have told.'

On every side I heard heart-rending cries, But not a person could I there behold: Wherefore I stopped, bewildered with surprise. Methinks he thought I thought the voices came From some that, hiding, in the thicket lay: Because the Master said, 'If thou but maim One of these plants, yea, pluck a branch away, Then shall thy judgment be more just than now.' Therefore my hand I slightly forward reached: And while I wrenched away a little bough From a huge bush, Why mangle me?' it