IN the month of August, 1856, I attempted the experiment of translating into terza rima the beautiful story of Francesca of Rimini, in the fifth Canto of the Inferno. I was then employed as a district officer in the Madras Presidency, and I continued to occupy my leisure in the translation of the poem, completing the whole of the Inferno early in the following year. Throughout the year 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, my family being in England, I was living as the only English officer in charge of a large sub-district, and throughout that year I was absolutely without any English companion, and with the terrible tales of mutiny and massacre that. Reached me daily through the Press, I lived unarmed and in absolute security amidst a peaceful agricultural community. Such a life was singularly suitable for literary labour, and during my many hours of solitary leisure in that stirring year I completed in the month of October my translation of the Divine Comedy. I spent the next year in a careful revision of my work, and then laid it by, h0ping that I might live to publish it in after years.