appear once more to him. Thence she, as the type of that
knowledge through which comes the love of God, should lead him,
through the Heavens up to the Empyrean, to the consummation of
his course in the actual vision of God.


AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY.

The Essay by Mr. Lowell, to which I have already referred (Dante,
Lowell's Prose Works, vol. iv.) is the best introduction to the
study of the poem. It should be read and re-read.

Dante, an essay by the late Dean Church, is the work of a learned
and sympathetic scholar, and is an excellent treatise on the
life, times, and work of the poet.

The Notes and Illustrations that accompany Mr. Longfellow's
translation of the Divine Comedy form an admirable body of
comment on the poem.

The Rev. Dr. Edward Moore's little volume, on The Time-References
in the Divina Cominedia (London, 1887), is of great value in
making the progress of Dante's journey clear, and in showing
Dante's scrupulous consistency of statement. Dr. Moore's more
recent work, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divina
Commedia (Cambridge, 1889), is to be warmly commended to the
advanced student.

These sources of information are enough for the mere English
reader. But one who desires to make himself a thorough master of
the poem must turn to foreign sources of instruction: to Carl
Witte's invaluable Dante-Forschungen (2 vols. Halle, 1869); to
the comment, especially that on the Paradiso, which accompanies
the German translation of the Divine Comedy by Philalethes. the
late King John of Saxony; to Bartoli's life of Dante in his
Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Firenze, 1878 and subsequent
years), and to Scartazzini's Prolegomeni della Divina Commedia
(Leipzig, 1890). The fourteenth century Comments, especially
those of Boccaccio, of Buti, and of Benvenuto da Imola, are
indispensable to one who would understand the poem as it was
understood by Dante's immediate contemporaries and successors. It
is from them and from the Chronicle of Dante's contemporary and
fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, that our knowledge concerning
many of the personages mentioned in the Poem is derived.

In respect to the theology and general doctrine of the Poem, the
Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is the main source from
which Dante himself drew.


Of editions of the Divina Commedia in Italian, either that of
Andreoli, or of Bianchi, or of Fraticelli, each in one volume,
may be recommended to the beginner. Scartazzini's edition in
three volumes is the best, in spite of some serious defects, for
the deeper student.


HELL.

CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill
which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he
turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into
the eternal world.


Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark
wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it
is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in
thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little
more. But in order to treat of the good that there I found, I
will tell of the other things that I have seen there. I cannot
well recount how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that
point where I abandoned the true way. But after I had arrived at
the foot of a hill, where that valley ended which had pierced my
heart with fear, I looked on high, and saw its shoulders clothed
already with the rays of the planet[1] that leadeth men aright
along every path. Then was the fear a little quieted which in the
lake of my heart had lasted through the night that I passed so
piteously. And even as one who with spent breath, issued out of
the sea upon the shore, turns to the perilous water and gazes, so
did my soul, which still was flying, turn back to look again upon
the pass which never had a living person left.


[1] The sun, a planet according to the Ptolemaic system.


After I had rested a little my weary body I took my way again
along the desert slope, so that the firm foot was always the
lower. And ho! almost at the beginning of the steep a
she-leopard, light and very nimble, which was covered with a
spotted coat. And she did not move from before my face, nay,
rather hindered so my road that to return I oftentimes had
turned.

The time was at the beginning of the morning, and the Sun was
mounting upward with those stars that were with him when Love
Divine first set in motion those beautiful things;[1] so that the
hour of the time and the sweet season were occasion of good hope
to me concerning that wild beast with the dappled skin. But not


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