Descend where nitre, coal, and sulphur lie.
Stanza lxxviii. line 3.
In the original,
Carbon, zolfo e con salnitro, &c.
I may possibly be blamed for translating carbon coal; but the English word coal, in its true signification, means charcoal, in which sense it is used by Lord Bacon; what we now term coal being formerly termed seacoal, as it is now named by the Italians, carbon’ fossile. But it may be said to me, with reference to other places, besides this, why imitate the trecentisti of Italy, and turn back to pick up
‘Phrase which Time has flung away?’
I answer, that I stand in a very different position from these authors, and that I should not do what they are doing, if writing an original poem on a modern subject; but to seek my phraseology in English authors nearest to the time of Ariosto, seems to me to be the best mode of avoiding one of the rocks on which the late translator of Ariosto has split, the awakening modern associations. To this it maybe added, that certain terms of art and of chivalry, &c. can only be rendered by equivalents, to be found in the language of those days. Indeed I may go further, and say that many of the most familiar modes of expression in old Italian authors can only be precisely translated by cotemporary English terms; owing to the writers of the Elizabethan age having formed their phraseology so closely upon Italian models. It is upon this principle that I have ventured to render sossopra by its exact equivalent of upside-down, the use of which I conceived to be justified by the translation of the psalms and Bible; and indeed I have usually the authority of this or some other works, unexceptionable in point of language, for such old words as I have employed, nor have I used one Spenserian expression, which is not borne out by the adoption of some other and surer warranty. I say this
