of the Divine Comedy it has no superior. Its form is that of verse of five feet, with alternate rhymes. It does not attempt to render verse for verse, nor even to follow literally the words of the original without other addition or subtraction than that which the genius of the language requires. The translator allows himself a certain freedom. He is a poet, and his translation is to be an English poem. The substance is Dante's, but the mode of expression is often changed from his. Without knowledge of the origi nal, one may read it with ease and pleasure, and with little sense of any hampering conformities to a foreign original. There are many parts in which the translation reaches so high a level of natural poetry that the reader may readily forget that the English poet is following an Italian model. But the student of Dante's own verse feels throughout that the style and tone are the translator's, not Dante's. It may be a fine style, it may be a fine tone, but neither one nor the other is that of him who sovra gli altri come aquila vola. The aquiline character is not here. The sweep of wing, the compressed force of stroke, the reserved power, are wanting. Take a single instance, two verses from the famous fifth canto of the Inferno: 'Io cominciai: Poeta volentieri Parlerei a que' due che insieme vanno.' 'And I began: Great builder of the rhyme! Fain would I speak with yonder pair who glide.' "The difference is not a mere difference between Italian and English; it is a difference of essence, a difference in poetic nature, a difference, as I have said, of style and tone. "But, when every allowance is made, this work of Dr. Parsons's is an achievement of credit to American literature, and, in conjunction with his original poetry, it will secure for him that onrata nominanza which he would have desired as a follower of the altissimo poeta. His name will shine bright on our roll so long as our Society itself endures. "I cannot speak of our loss in him without being reminded of the other loss which this past year has brought to us in the death of the fourth of our most distinguished members, - Mr. George William Curtis. He had never, indeed, been present in our meetings, he was no special student of Dante, but he was known, honored, and loved by us all, and there was no man in America who cared more for that higher culture of which the study of Dante is a part, or who represented it more truly in his life and work. You will not misunderstand me, but will say with me, 'Heu! quanto minus est cum aliis versari, quam tui meminisse.'" The first of the accompanying papers is a reprint, with the author's permission, of a valuable article in the London Academy of June 4, 1892, on "Dante's Obligations to the De Officiis with regard to the Division and Order of Sins in the Inferno," by an honorary member of the Society, Dr. Edward Moore. The second paper is the list of books and periodical articles relating to Dante received at Harvard College Library during the year ending May 1, 1893. These number 154 titles; 10 are works purchased with the Society's money; 60 were given by authors, editors, or others; the rest are articles in periodicals or books bought with Library funds. To the many friends of the Society in Italy and elsewhere who have presented their writings to be added to its Dante library, to each of whom a note of thanks has already been sent by mail, the Society desires again publicly to express its gratitude. Attention is called to the fact that members of the Society can always consult at the College Library in Cambridge the books belonging to its Dante Collection. Members can also have such books sent them in the way they designate, if their applications (which should give definite titles) are first transmitted to Professor A. R. Marsh, Cambridge, Mass., and are approved by him. GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, Secretary, For the Council of the Dante Society. MAY, 1893. I. DANTE'S OBLIGATIONS TO THE DE OFFICIIS IN BY DR. EDWARD MOORE, Principal of S. Edmund Hall, Oxford. The following is a reprint of part of an article published in the London Academy for June 4, 1892. Some passages there only referred to are here reproduced in full. I T is needless to say that the present work1 exhibits the same wealth of classical, and especially Aristotelian, illustrations, as the earlier ones; and it is equally needless to point out the interest and value of such illustrations in the case of an author whose knowledge of such literature, considering the age in which he lived, and the difficulties and disadvantages by which the acquisition of such knowledge was then beset, to say nothing of the further obstacles offered by his own troubled and unsettled life, — is nothing short of astonishing. Nor has this line been satisfactorily worked before, except perhaps, to some extent, by Scartazzini, but certainly not even by him in respect of the Inferno, where his notes are unfortunately on a very inferior scale as compared with those on the other Cantiche. Thus the student will find, notwithstanding the very large number of existing commentaries, fresh lines of exegesis and new sources of illustration in Mr. Butler's work, such as probably 1 The Hell of Dante Alighieri. With Translation and Notes. By Arthur John Butler. Macmillans. no other living Dante scholar is equally well able to supply. Of course, we should not expect to find the influence of Aristotle so pervading in the Inferno as in the other parts of the poem; and, as Mr. Butler points out,' there are naturally more traces of the Ethics here, as there are of the De Anima and Metaphysics in the Purgatorio and Paradiso. The most striking and important of such references is, doubtless, that in Inf., xi. 80;" and it is worth referring to in some detail, since it has given rise to great differences of opinion, and to some of the most fantastically erroneous interpretations of the general plan of the Inferno. Without attributing anything of this sort to Mr. Butler, we feel compelled to differ entirely from the conclusion which he has reached, and to hold that Dr. Witte is certainly right as to his interpretation of this fundamental point. Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how any one, carefully regarding the context in which the words occur, could possibly come to any other conclusion. 1 ["In order to understand the full force of these lines (Inf., ii. 76 ff.), it is necessary to bear in mind that as the Purgatory and the Paradise respectively embody the teaching of the De Anima and Metaphysics of Aristotle, so this Cantica is based on the Ethics. The terms in which Virgil is made to address Beatrice contain an obvious allusion to the tenth book of that treatise." Page 21.] 2 Lines 79-84: 79. 82. "Non ti rimembra di quelle parole, Colle quai la tua Etica pertratta Le tre disposizion che il ciel non vuole : Bestialitade? e come incontinenza Men dio offende e men biasimo accatta?" 8" Wie allgemein verbreitet auch die Meinung ist, dass nach Virgil's Zeugniss die Gliederung der Hölle auf Aristoteles beruhe, so ist sie dennoch eine irrige. Die bekannte, von Dante angeführte, Stelle der Nikomacheischen Ethik bezeichnet das sittlich zu Meidende : Tà tepì tà čon pevkтά als von dreierlei Art; die Dantesche Hölle kennt aber nur zwei Haupttheile, deren zweiter, wie Abegg richtig bemerkt, nach Cicero's, nicht Aristoteles' Vorgang in zwei weitere Unterabtheilungen zerfällt. "Erst nachdem Virgil das ganze Schema der innerhalb der Stadt Dis bestraften Sünden, ohne alle Berufung auf den Stagiriten entwickelt, beantwortet er |