Of Italian, with which she was naturally _most_ conversant, she was recognised by acknowledged experts to be a thoroughly competent critic.
She published, now many years ago, in the _Athenaeum_, some translations from the satirist Giusti, which any intelligent reader would, I think, recognise to be cleverly done.

But none save the very few in this country, who know and can understand the Tuscan poet's works in the original, can at all conceive the difficulty of translating him into tolerable English verse.

And I have no hesitation in asserting, that any competent judge, who is such by virtue of understanding the original, would pronounce her translations of Giusti to be a masterpiece, which very few indeed of contemporary men or women could have produced.

I have more than once surprised her in tears occasioned by her obstinate struggles with some passage of the intensely idiomatic satirist, which she found it almost--but eventually not quite--impossible to render to her satisfaction.
She published a translation of Niccolini's _Arnaldo da Brescia_, which won the cordial admiration and friendship of that great poet.

And neither Niccolini's admiration nor his friendship were easily won.