DGR's Poesie
Italiane inedite
The subject of this caricature is Albizzo de' Caponsacchi (known as the Lord Messerin), who may have been the maternal uncle of Beatrice Portinari. The diction of the translation is effective but the opening quatrain's metrics, a kind of doggerel, weaken the sonnet. DGR would probably have done much better to have flattened the verse toward a prose rhythm of the kind one sees in so many of his other translations.
The translation is probably an early one, late 1840s.
The translation was first published in 1861 in
The
Early Italian Poets
Dante
and his Circle
Early Italian Poets)Poeti de Duecento
Poesie Italiana inedite