THE HELL OF DANTE T H E H E L L OF DANTE ALIGHIERI EDITED WITH TRANSLATION AND NOTES BY ARTHUR JOHN BUTLER LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE New York MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1894 All rights reserved PREFACE CONTENTS PRELIMINARY NOTE P R E F A C E THE editor who has begun elsewhere than at the beginning of the work which he undertakes to edit, however good his motives for taking that course may at the time have appeared, has reason to regret it when in the progress of events he is carried back to the beginning. Unless he wishes to have his book incomplete, the moment must ultimately come when he has to do for the whole work what he has done for its parts, viz. write a preface. Then he finds that he has already used up on the parts a great deal of material which would have been equally useful as an introduction to the whole, and perhaps more in place; while in some cases it is pretty sure to happen that he has appended to the later portions remarks which are out of date when what should be the earlier portion appears. On the other hand, it is to be said that the preface to the complete work is likely to involve the most Labor; and of this he may, by a judicious postponement, very possibly succeed in getting a good deal taken off his hands by other people. On the whole, the present editor may congratulate himself (and his readers) that by dealing last with the first portion of Dante’s great poem he has gained more under the latter head than he has lost under the former. Since his Purgatory was published full eleven years have passed; and in the course of those years an immense quantity of most valuable work has been done. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that the study of Dante has been placed on quite a different footing. Nearly all the usually-accepted statements with regard to Dante’s own history, passed on without criticism from one commentator to another, have been sifted and tested, with the result that much which has long passed muster as solid fact has had to fall back into the class of amiable conjecture. Readings and interpretations, unquestioned perhaps for four hundred years, have been shown to be devoid of authority. In some cases, it may be, the process has been carried a little too far. Scepticism is all very well; but it must confine itself to its proper domain, and not extend its borders till it includes negative dogmatism. Nevertheless, the study of such works as Professor Bartoli’s volume on Dante in his History of Italian Literature, or Dr. Scartazzini’s Prolegomeni, can but have a bracing effect on the mind of the student. When we pass to matters more immediately concerning the interpretation of the poem, we are still more struck with the activity of the last decade. It would be hard to say how many translations have appeared, either of the whole or of portions. Those by the late Dean of Wells and Mr. F. K. H. Haselfoot will be familiar to all who care to keep abreast of the subject. Dr. Plumptre belonged perhaps rather to the school which is just now out of favor: that which was inclined to allow its ‘affection to bind its understanding’ and believe with regard to Dante all that seemed pleasant to believe so long as it was not demonstrably untrue. But he was an indefatigable student, with a wide knowledge of other literature, which has not always been possessed by interpreters of Dante. Dr. Moore’s Textual Criticism, unfortunately as yet incomplete for the second and third Cantiche, is a piece of work of which it is hard to overrate the importance. Those who differ from Dr. Moore on a matter of reading or interpretation had better (as Hermann said of Lachmann) think twice whether he and not they be in fault; and even if they finally decide to agree with themselves and not with him, they will pretty certainly have learnt more from him than they ever knew before. Nor must his two smaller works, ‘chips from the workshop,’ The Time References of the Divina Commedia and Dante and his Biographers, be overlooked by any one who wishes his ideas on those points cleared. Mention too must be made of some books which show that the importance of Dante’s other works, not only to the proper understanding of the Commedia, but as specimens of medieval thought in literature, politics, morals, science, is beginning to be recognized. Ten years ago the de Monarchia and the Vita Nuova alone of his prose writings had been rendered into English. Now we have two translations (neither, it must be said, ideal, but showing at least a proper spirit) of the Convito, and one, very creditable, of the de Vulgari Eloquentia. The truth is that Dante fills the stream of human history from side to side. There have been greater poets, one or two; there have been greater thinkers, greater men of affairs; but of no other poet can it be said that he was the greatest political thinker of his age; of no other philosopher or theologian that he was its greatest poet. Nor have poets as a rule taken a very high place in science or philosophers in scholarship; yet in these subjects Dante was among the first men of his age. His acquaintance with all accessible literature and his grasp of all attainable scientific knowledge were equally complete. Herein lie at once the attraction which he exercises over his would-be students and the despair to which he reduces them. You never know into what branch of investigation he may lead you; but you are sure that in a very large proportion of cases you will be (if the word maybe pardoned) ‘pounded’ before you reach the end of it. In fact, no really adequate edition of Dante will ever be put forth until a number of students will bind themselves to read (among them) everything that Dante can have read, and to have made themselves as familiar as he with the events, small and great, of his age. All commentators save the earliest—all, at any rate, who wrote between 1400 and 1800— they may safely eschew. From the days of Benvenuto Rambaldi of Imola till those of Carl Witte of Halle, it is hard to point to any editor or commentator (with perhaps the exception of our own Cary) who has thrown any really fresh light on the difficulties of the Commedia. Landino, undoubtedly a man of much learning, and in his way an admirer of Dante, was not really capable of understanding him; as a Humanist and a Platonist his literary and intellectual sympathies were not in the direction of thirteenth-century Aristotelianism. Nor could it be expected that a Medicean and Borgian age would be capable of estimating Dante, though he would have estimated it; and one almost regrets that he did not come into the world late enough to do so. In that case, however, the sentence ‘igne comburatur sic quod moriatur’ would probably not have remained a mere caution. The worthy Cruscan Academicians did their best. They gave the Commedia the rank of a ‘Testo di lingua,’ and endeavored, with moderate success, to establish an accurate text. Then came the age which admired Marino; it could hardly be expected to read Dante. Three editions (or possibly four), and those mere texts, and bad texts, are all that Italy produced during the 120 years ending with 1716. Occasionally some eccentric person betrays a knowledge of the poem. Tommaso Campanella was no doubt full of it; but he, again, belonged to a school of philosophy as wide as the poles from that which inspired Dante. Our own Milton, a kindred genius so far as was possible when the Renaissance and the Reformation lay between the two, had, it is pretty clear, saturated himself with Dante. Beside the passages, and they are not many, which he avowedly quotes, we find at every turn touches and phrases in which we can hardly fail to recognize the Florentine’s influence. But these are exceptions. For a hundred and fifty years Dante practically passed out of European literature; and even when the praiseworthy, if inadequate, efforts of such men as Volpi, Venturi, and Lombardi had done something to recall the attention of Italians to their greatest man, it was still many years before his fame spread much further. Then, however, a great stride was made. Cary’s translation, with notes, of which portions were published in 1805 and the following year, and the whole in 1814, attracted the attention of Coleridge and doubtless of others, and brought Dante for the first time within the field of view of educated English people. It has been frequently reprinted, and remains, in text and commentary, unquestionably the best book to which the study of Dante in England has ever given birth. It is astonishing how constantly it occurs that when one has hunted up, or fortuitously come across, some passage to illustrate Dante rather out of the ordinary run of literature, one finds that Cary has got it already. He had read the Schoolmen, Brunetto, Villani, and the like; and came to the task with a better equipment than any commentator for many centuries. Then came various cultivated Italians, Foscolo and others, driven from their own country for reasons not unlike those for which Dante had to leave Florence and ‘ogni cosa diletta più caramente,’ who wrote and talked about him; and the average Englishman learned at least that Dante was a ‘world poet,’ and not merely a foreign celebrity. We need not despair of seeing him one day take his place beside (but not instead of) Homer and Virgil in the curriculum of our schools and universities. It will perhaps not be out of place here to say a word with regard to the importance of the Divine Comedy as a subject of study at all, over and above its purely aesthetic merits. It is not too much to say that there is no one work of human genius which can equal it as an instrument of education, intellectual and moral. As to the former, it is only needful to realize that it is the summary of all the thought and speculation, the record of all the action of the thirteenth century: the age which of all whose memory remains to us produced the greatest number of great men. This was the age of Frederick II, Lewis IX., Simon of Montfort, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon; the age which saw the revival of painting in Cimabue and Giotto, of sculpture in Nicholas; while Amiens and Westminster, the Old Palace of Florence and the Holy Field of Pisa are living evidence of what it could do in the noblest of all the arts. It was to such an age as this that Dante’s poem first gave a voice; and he who would appreciate the poem, must first have made himself in some degree familiar with the age. In estimating the moral value of the Divine Comedy, I cannot do better than quote the eloquent words of the late Dean of St. Paul’s, whose admirable essay ought to be in the hands of every reader of Dante:—“Those who know it best will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind, but they will sympathise with the wish to call attention to it. They know and would wish others to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is in its free and earnest yet solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth and sea and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognize, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression by look or gesture or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feelings and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faintheartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted harmony to the view of clashing truths.” To go back for a moment to our starting-point, it may be observed that the recent increase in the aids to the study of Dante has coincided with a gratifying development in the study itself. We hear on all hands of lectures and classes, where it is to be hoped that solid work is done. There is therefore the less necessity to give here advice which students will get elsewhere from more competent advisers. I may perhaps be allowed to point out that before entering on the study of the first Cantica, the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid should be carefully read, in the original if possible; but good ‘cribs’ are available in prose and verse. The Tesoretto of Brunetto Latini, at any rate its opening, is also worth looking at. Aquinas is of less importance here than he becomes later; but the Ethics of Aristotle were constantly in Dante’s mind as he wrote. Dr. Carlyle’s of course remains the standard prose translation; nor should I have thought it necessary to produce another had not the law of copyright prevented me from using his. His few slips could easily have been corrected without interfering with his admirable language. Mr. Eliot Norton’s recent version I have but seen; his reputation as a scholar, however, is a sufficient guarantee of its quality. Besides the friends mentioned in my other prefaces, I may be allowed here to thank the Ely Professor of Divinity for looking over and correcting my statement of the doctrine of Grace in the note to Canto II; and (in justice to a class not always appreciated according to its merits) Messrs. Clark’s reader, for saving me from a great many small blunders, and one or two large. A few words of explanation as to abbreviations, etc., will suffice. The numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 denote respectively the editions of Foligno, Jesi, Mantua, Naples (Francesco del Tuppo), and Naples (1477). The readings of the last are taken from the late Dr. Barlow’s Seicento Lezioni, published in 1875. I have used the letters Gg., its pressmark, to indicate a MS. belonging to the University of Cambridge, Dr. Moore’s ‘Q.’ This I collated myself for Purgatory and Paradise: in the present volume I have taken its readings on Dr. Moore’s authority. Diez’s Grammar of the Romance Languages is quoted by volume and page from the French translation of MM. Brachet, Morel-Fatio, and Gaston Paris. (Paris: Franck. 1874-76.) References to Villani are according to the chapters as they are numbered in the edition in two volumes published at Milan, without date, edited by Dr. A. Racheli. Besides these, there are, I believe, no references or abbreviations which will not explain themselves. November 1891.