1855.] on Dante and the " Divina Commedia." 121 



the most beautiful poetical language, sucli as Dante alone had 

 the power of combining with the scholastic theology. It was 

 the temporal power of the Popes that Dante so constantly attacked, 

 and that in no liidden way, as might be seen by a reference to three 

 beautiful passages in Inf. xix. 46-123, Purg. xvi. 97-132, and 

 Par. xxvii. 1-66. Dante in this respect might be considered a 

 proof that the teaching of Arnaldo da Brescia had taken hold on 

 the Italian minds. Mr. Lacaita then briefly commented on the 

 controversy raised with regard to the orthodoxy of Dante at the 

 time of the Reformation, and the strange decision given by the 

 Pere Hardouin, that La Commedia was the work of a disciple of 

 Wicliff. 



He afterwards took a rapid survey of the fluctuations of the 

 estimation in which the Commedia had been held at different 

 times ; as a proof of which he noticied that the poem, from 1420 to 

 loOO, had gone through 20 editions ; through 42, from 1501 to 

 1597 ; through 4, from 1598 to 1727 ; throngh 42, from 1728 to 

 1800; and through more than 180, from 1800 to 1850. He 

 ascribed the neglect into which it had fallen during the whole of 

 the 16th century to the influence of Spanish rule, and the power 

 of the Inquisition in Italy ; and pointed out how the falling oflf of 

 taste in literature, and even in the Fine Arts in Italy had been, if 

 not consequent upon, at least simultaneous with, such neglect. The 

 poem was well known in England in the 14th and 15th centuries ; 

 passages were quoted in which Chaucer had alluded to, or translated 

 from it. But afterwards the poem seems to have been nearly for- 

 gotten, till attention was again called to it by a first English trans- 

 lation in 1773. A few observations were here introduced on the 

 respective merits of the various English translations ; and Mr. 

 Pollock's recent translation was particularly noticed for its faithful 

 conveyance of the meaning of the original. The speaker after- 

 wards proceeded to say, that it was remarkable that Addison seems 

 to have ignored, if not the existence, at least the great merits of 

 the Commedia, so far, that in his journey to Italy, although he 

 describes several monuments at Ravenna, he does not even allude to 

 the tomb of Dante, which only a few years before his visit had 

 been restored by Cardinal Corsi. It was a curious coincidence that 

 at the revival of the study of Dante in Italy, in the 18th century, 

 Voltaire and the ex-jesuit Bettinelli both agreed, though from 

 different motives, in attacking Dante ; Bettinelli, in his Letiere 

 Virgiliane, went even further than Voltaire, who admitted that the 

 Commedia was, " Un ouvrage bizarre ; mais brillant de beautes 

 naturelles, ou Tauteur s'eleve dans les details au dessus du mauvais 

 gout de son siecle et de son sujet." 



After warmly contending against the preference sometimes given 

 of the Inferno as the finest part of the poem, a preference explained 

 perhaps by the fact that many never read the Purgatorio and the 

 Paradiso, which nevertheless display, when compared with the In- 



