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making of the bibliography that an undue proportion of time was spent upon this part.

In my account of what has been done in America in the way of study and interpretation of Dante, I have thought it best to treat only of the chief of his students, reserving for the bibliography and notes other matters of minor import. The amount of space given in my sketch to the several workers in this field must not be considered as indicative of my rating of them or their work. More is said of the pioneers in the movement than is warranted by the present value of their tangible results. They left us almost nothing in the way of literature, but they took the initiative step and it is for this reason that I have treated of them at such length. In the case of Da Ponte and Wilde it seemed necessary to enter into some biographical detail, as their lives are probably unknown to the generality of those I count upon as my readers. Of the work of the later followers of Dante, beginning with Longfellow, so much has been said by others and some of it so admirably said that it is with diffidence I have dared to say anything new, and I have but seldom ventured beyond the limits of simple narration. Those who seek for further criticism and more individual estimate than I have been able to give are referred to the bibliography as an abundant source.

September 15, 1896.

T. W. K.

DANTE IN AMERICA.

INTRODUCTION.

THE interest in modern languages and literature which is so widespread in America to-day is of comparatively recent origin. What little there was at the end of the last century and in the beginning of this is to be traced to commercial needs or to social ambitions. Moreover, those who sought instruction were often compelled to study under incompetent and even self-taught men who had little notion of the literature, and sometimes no idea of the proper pronunciation of the languages they professed to teach. In the colleges it was not much better; at Harvard, says Lowell, "a stray Frenchman was caught now and then and kept as long as he could endure the baiting of his pupils. After failing as a teacher of his mothertongue, he commonly turned dancing-master, a calling which public opinion seems to have put on the same intellectual level with the other." 1 Da Ponte tells us that on the occasion of his first visit to New York, in 1805, it took him but a few days to discover that there was as little known in that city of the language and literature of his native country as of the language and literature of Turkey or China. In Boston, in 1815, George Ticknor found it not only difficult to get a copy of Dante, but altogether impossible to get help in reading it. Now all this is changed; the study of the modern languages has been placed on an equal footing with classical studies, and the growth of interest in our special author is indicative of the extent of the change. At present, ten of our leading colleges are offering special courses in the study of the Divina Commedia; Harvard and Cornell have most excellent Dante collections, and Dantesque litera

1 Address before the Modern Language Association, Cambridge, Mass., December, 1889.

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ture is well represented in many public and private libraries. our larger cities lectures are frequently given on the poet and his works, while among the new books and in the literary journals the name of Dante is constantly recurring.

This contrast between the present interest in Dante and the small following which he had in America in the early part of the century indicates an advance in culture and sound literary judgment. The statement that the love of Italian poetry has risen and fallen in England with the rise and decay of true poetic feeling and workmanship, is also, in a much more restricted measure, of course, true of American letters.

Dante and his master-work have entered into the literary heritage of our day, not only of continental Europe, but also of the Englishspeaking people at home and abroad. To trace his varied fortunes before attaining to the universally acknowledged position of a worldpoet, is one of the most captivating and instructive pieces of researchwork in the history of literature. He was praised and worshipped by one generation, to be neglected or altogether misunderstood — a worse fate by the next. To many people of different times Dante has been but a name; often the well-known name of a man about whom a few facts, gained at second-hand, have sufficed to sate curiosity. Among English men of letters we find him admired and imitated by Chaucer, read by Spenser, possibly known to Sackville, and curiously estimated by that saucy poet of Elizabeth's day, Sir John Harington, while by Francis Meres he was compared to Matthew Roydon! Then came Milton, by whom (to his glory be it said) tribute was paid to him both in prose and verse. After this, there follows a period in which there is no token of Dante being esteemed worthy the attention of English men of culture. Thus, in 1749, Lord Chesterfield writes to his son, urging him to the study of the Italian language, and asserts that the only two Italian poets who merit his attention are Ariosto and Tasso. Voltaire gave voice to the opinion of the reading world of his day when he said of Dante: "Il y a de lui une vingtaine de traits qu'on sait par cœur cela suffit pour s'épargner la peine d'examiner le reste." But with the weakening of the autocratic sway of eighteenth-century classicism and the assertion of sounder principles of literary criticism, Dante's star rose slowly and