uncouth; but, if this is acknowledged, yet it must be remembered that he gave a permanent stamp and character to the language in which he wrote, and in which, before him, nothing great had been attempted; that the diction is strictly vernacular, without any debasement of foreign idiom; that his numbers have as much variety as the Italian tongue, at least in that kind of metre, could supply; and that, although succeeding writers may have surpassed him in the lighter graces and embellishments of style, not one of them has equaled him in succinctness, vivacity, and strength.

Never did any poem rise so suddenly into notice after the death of its author, or engage the public attention more powerfully, than the Divina Commedia. This cannot be attributed solely to its intrinsic excellence. The freedom with which the writer had treated the most distinguished characters of his time, gave it a further and stronger hold on the curiosity of the age: many saw in it their acquaintances, kinsmen, and friends, or, what scarcely touched them less nearly, their enemies, either consigned to infamy or recorded with honour, and represented in another world as tasting

Of heaven's sweet cup, or poisonous drug of hell;

so that not a page could be opened without exciting the strongest personal feelings in the mind of the reader. These sources of interest must certainly be taken into our account, when we consider the rapid diffusion of the work, and the unexampled pains that were taken to render it universally intelligible. Not only the profound and subtile allegory which pervaded it, the mysterious style of prophecy which the writer occasionally assumed, the bold and unusual metaphors which he everywhere employed, and the great variety of knowledge he displayed; but his hasty allusions to passing events, and his description of persons by accidental circumstances, such as some peculiarity of form or feature, the place of their nativity or abode, some office they held, or the heraldic insignia they bore-all asked for the help of commentators and expounders, who were not long wanting to the task. Besides his two sons, to whom that labour most properly belonged, many others were found ready to engage in it. Before

the century had expired, there appeared the commentaries of Accorso de' Bonfantini1, a Franciscan; of Micchino da Mezzano, a canon of Ravenna ; of Fra. Riccardo, a Carmelite; of Andrea, a Neapolitan; of Guiniforte Bazzisio, a Bergamese; of Fra. Paolo Albertino; and of several writers whose names are unknown, and whose toils, when Pelli wrote, were concealed in the dust of private libraries2. About the year 1350, Giovanni Visconti, archbishop of Milan, selected six of the most learned men in Italy, two divines, two philosophers, and two Florentines; and gave it them in charge to contribute their joint endeavours towards the compilation of an ample comment, a copy of which is preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence. Who these were is no longer known; but Jacopo della Lana3, and Petrarch, are conjectured to have been among the number. At Florence, a public lecture was founded for the purpose of explaining a poem, that was at the same time the boast and the disgrace of the city. The decree for this institution was passed in 1373; and in that year Boccaccio, the first of their writers in prose, was appointed, with an annual salary of a hundred florens, to deliver lectures in one of the churches, on the first of their poets. On this occasion he wrote his comment, which extends only to a part of the Inferno, and has been printed. In 1375 Boccaccio died; and among his successors in this honourable employment we find the names of Antonio Piovano in 1381, and of Filippo Villani in 1401.

The example of Florence was speedily followed by Bologna, by Pisa, by Piacenza, and by Venice. Benvenuto da Imola, on whom the office of lecturer devolved at Bologna, sustained it for the

1 Tiraboschi, Stor. della Poes. Ital. vol. ii. p. 39; and Pelli,

p. 119.

2 The Lettera di Eustazio Dicearcheo, &c. mentioned above, p. 29, contains many extracts from an early MS. of the Divina Commedia, with marginal notes in Latin, preserved in the monastery of Monte Cassino. To these extracts I shall have frequent occasion to refer.

3 Pelli, p. 119, informs us, that the writer, who is termed sometimes "the good," sometimes the "old commentator," by those deputed to correct the Decameron, in the preface to their explanatory notes, and who began his work in 1334, is known to be Jacopo della Lana; and that his commentary was translated into Latin by Alberigo da Rosada, Doctor of Laws at Bologna.

space of ten years. From the comment, which he composed for the purpose, and which he sent abroad in 1379, those passages, that tend to illustrate the history of Italy, have been published by Muratori1. At Pisa, the same charge was committed to Francesco da Buti about 1386.

On the invention of printing, in the succeeding century, Dante was one of those writers who were first and most frequently given to the press. But I do not mean to enter on an account of the numerous editions of our author, which were then, or have since been published; but shall content myself with adding such remarks as have occurred to me on reading the principal writers, by whose notes those editions have been accompanied.

Of the four chief commentators on Dante, namely Landino, Vellutello, Venturi, and Lombardi, the, first appears to enter most thoroughly into the mind of the Poet. Within little more than a century of the time in which Dante had lived; himself a Florentine, while Florence was still free, and still retained something of her ancient simplicity; the associate of those great men who adorned the age of Lorenzo de' Medici; Landino2 was the most capable of forming some estimate of the mighty stature of his compatriot, who was indeed greater than them all. His taste for the classics, which were then newly revived, and had become the principal objects of public curiosity, as it impaired his relish for what has not inaptly been termed the romantic literature, did not, it is true, improve him for a critic on the Divina Commedia. adventures of King Arthur, by which3 Dante had been delighted, appeared to Landino no better than a fabulous and inelegant book4. He is, besides, sometimes, unnecessarily prolix; at others,

The

1 Antiq. Ital. v. i. The Italian comment published under the name of Benvenuto da Imola, at Milan, in 1473, and at Venice in 1477, is altogether different from that which Muratori has brought to light, and appears to be the same as the Italian comment of Jacopo della Lana before mentioned. See Tiraboschi.

2 Cristofforo Landino was born in 1424, and died in 1504 or 1508. See Bandini, Specimen Litterat. Florent. Edit.

Florence, 1751.

3 See note to Purgatory, xxvi. 132.

4 "Il favoloso, e non molto elegante libro della Tavola Rotonda." Landino, in the notes to the Paradise, xvi.

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silent, where a real difficulty asks for solution ; and, now and then, a little visionary in his interpretation. The commentary of his successor, Vellutello 1, is more evenly diffused over the text; and although without pretensions to the higher qualities, by which Landino is distinguished, he is generally under the influence of a sober good sense, which renders him a steady and useful guide. Venturi, who followed after a long interval of time, was too much swayed by his principles, or his prejudices, as a Jesuit, to suffer him to judge fairly of a Ghibelline poet; and either this bias, or a real want of tact for the higher excellence of his author, or, perhaps, both these imperfections together, betray him into such impertinent and injudicious sallies, as dispose us to quarrel with our companion, though, in the main, a very attentive one, generally acute and lively, and at times even not devoid of a better understanding for the merits of his master. To him, and in our own times, has succeeded the Padre Lombardi3. This good Franciscan, no doubt, must have given himself much pains to pick out and separate those ears of grain, which had escaped the flail of those who had gone before him in that labour. But his zeal to do something new often leads him to do something that is not over wise; and if on certain occasions we applaud his sagaciousness, on others we do not less wonder that his ingenuity should have been so strangely perverted. His manner of writing is awkward and tedious; his attention, more than is necessary, directed to grammatical niceties; and his attachment to one of the old editions, so excessive, as to render him disingenuous or partial in his representation of the rest. But to compensate this, he is a good Ghibelline; and his opposition to Venturi seldom fails to awaken him into a perception of those beauties which had only exercised the spleen of the Jesuit.

He, who shall undertake another commentary on Dante1 yet completer than any of those which

1 Alessandro Vellutello was born in 1519.

2 Pompeo Venturi was born in 1693, and died in 1752. 3 Baldassare Lombardi died January 2, 1802.

cellieri. Osservazioni. &c. Roma, 1814. p. 112.

See Can

4 Francesco Cionacci, a noble Florentine, projected an edition of the Divina Commedia in one hundred volumes,

have hitherto appeared, must make use of these four, but depend on none. To them he must add several others of minor note, whose diligence will nevertheless be found of some advantage, and among whom I can particularly distinguish Volpi. Besides this, many commentaries and marginal annotations, that are yet inedited, remain to be examined; many editions and manuscripts to be more carefully collated; and many separate dissertations and works of criticism to be considered. But this is not all. That line of reading which the Poet himself appears to have pursued (and there are many vestiges in his works by which we shall be enabled to discover it) must be diligently tracked; and the search, I have little doubt, would lead to sources of information, equally profitable and unexpected.

If there is any thing of novelty in the notes which accompany the following translation, it will be found to consist chiefly in a comparison of the Poet with himself, that is, of the Divina Commedia with his other writings2; a mode of illustration so obvious, that it is only to be wondered how others should happen to have made so little use of it. As to the imitations of my author by later poets, Italian and English, which I have collected in addition to those few that had been already remarked, they contribute little or nothing to the purposes of illustration, but must be considered merely as matter of curiosity, and as instances of the manner in which the great practitioners in art do not scruple to profit by their predecessors.

each containing a single canto, followed by all the commentaries, according to the order of time in which they were written, and accompanied by a Latin translation for the use of foreigners. Cancellieri, ibid. p. 64.

1 The Count Mortara has lately shown me many various readings he has remarked on collating the numerous MSS. of Dante in the Canonici collection at the Bodleian. It is to be hoped he will make them public. [Jany. 1843.]

2 The edition which is referred to in the following notes, is that printed at Venice in 2 vols. 8vo. 1793.

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