beauty, of a noble family of Siena. She was married to Nello della Pietra, who, being misled by false reports and unjust suspicions, conveyed her to the Maremma, a pestilential district, where in an isolated castle he shut himself up with his victim. He never told her the reason of her banishment, nor condescended to answer her questions, or heed her remonstrances. He waited in cold silence until the pestilential air should destroy her health. Some say he used the dagger to hasten her end. It is certain that he survived her, and became a prey to sadness and silent grief.

Dante had in this story, as Foscolo remarks, all the materials of an ample and very poetical narrative, but he bestows upon it only four lines. Yet how pathetic are these few words! Her first desire is to be recalled to the memory of her friends on earth; her modest request; her manner of naming herself, and of describing the author of her sufferings, without any allusion to his crime, but merely by the pledges of faith and love which attended their first union. All this is expressed with much pathos and power, and all within the narrow compass of four lines.

It is worthy of remark, as characteristic of the age, and of the high veneration in which Italy held her first national poet, that the lectures on the Divine Comedy were invested with a certain religious character by being delivered in churches, and, as a rule, on the days of great Christian festivals, when the crowded congregations, already under the influence of religious emotion, were in a fit state of mind to listen to the solemn strains of the great poet, who, according to the popular belief, had actually been in Hell, in Purgatory, and in Paradise, and only described what he had personally witnessed.

By a decree of the Florentine Republic, of the 9th August, 1373, it was ordered that Dante's poem should be read and explained in public, and Boccaccio was engaged as the first lecturer for a fee of 100 florins. Accordingly,

on the 3rd October, 1373, in the church of S. Stefano, near the Ponte Vecchio, before a numerous congregation, Boccaccio ascended the pulpit, and imparted a solemn tone to his subject by his introductory remarks :

"Human nature," he said, "although enriched by the Creator with so many privileges, is nevertheless so weak, that it can do nothing, however insignificant, without the Divine grace. Hence the greatest men, whether of ancient or modern times, urge us to seek for this grace in all simplicity, and with all the fervour of our devotion, at least at the beginning of any undertaking. At the very moment, then, of taking upon me a burden which is too heavy for me to bear, namely that of explaining the learned text, the multitude of historical events, and the elevated thoughts concealed under the veil of the Comedy of our Dante, and especially before persons of so high an intelligence and of such admirable perspicuity as you are, certainly I feel more than ever the need of such aid. Hence, in order that my words may redound to the honour and glory of God, to the benefit and consolation of my hearers, before proceeding further, I must invoke in all humility, the aid of God, confiding much more in his bounty than in my merit."

Boccaccio did not live to complete his arduous task. His written lectures end abruptly with an unfinished sentence, referring to the seventeenth canto of the Inferno, line 17. His friend Benvenuto da Imola succeeded him in these public readings; and it is said that at Bologna the audience was SO numerous, that the Professor had frequently to deliver his lectures in the public square of the city. The substance of these lectures was, at the request of Petrarch, formed into a commentary, which, to a certain extent, supplies what is wanting in Boccaccio.

The Laurentian Library at Florence contains a codex known as the Ottimo. It consists of a large folio volume, of 175 leaves of parchment, with the text in the middle of the page, surrounded by the commentary in smaller characters. The author of this commentary is not known. Some refer it to Jacopo della Lana, others to Dante's son Jacopo.

Whoever it was, he had personal relations with the poet, for he remarks on Inferno x. 85-" I, the writer, have heard Dante declare that he was never led by rhyme to say other than what he intended; but that he often caused his words to signify different senses to those in which they were used by other poets." It may also be noted that Dante often varies the spelling of a word for the sake of a rhyme.

At the time when Benvenuto was lecturing at Bologna, an unknown author was writing a commentary which is known as that of the Falso Boccaccio. It is the first of the four commentaries printed by Lord Vernon. It was for some time regarded as the work of Boccaccio, but it is marked neither by his pleasant style nor by his learning.

The most voluminous commentary resulted from the lectures of Francesco di Bartolo da Buti, delivered in the University of Pisa. It was completed in 1385, and is a mine of literary wealth, which for faithful and conscientious exposition of the text has not been surpassed. Landino, in his edition of 1481, made considerable use of this commentary; and Landino's work, according to Professor Witte, is the first real critical production for fixing the reading of the text and for determining the meaning of the poet.

It is only in recent times that lectureships on and societies for the study of the Divine Comedy have been established out of Italy. The late King of Saxony published a translation in German of the poem, under the nom de plume of "Philalethes," and he also established a Dante Society of which he was the first President, the present one being Professor Witte of Halle. This society has published several volumes of Transactions, and the present President has devoted many years to a careful preparation of the text of the poem; the result of the collation of the various manuscripts or codices, of which nearly 500 are scattered among the libraries of Europe, by far the greater number (390) belonging to Italy. There is no codex in existence of

a date anterior to that of the death of the poet. The earliest is dated 1336, or only fifteen years after that event ; but unfortunately this MSS. has in many places been altered from the original. The greater number of codices date from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth, when Gutenberg's great invention came into use, and printed books took the place of written ones.

The late Dr. Barlow, who devoted the greater part of his life to the study of Dante, bequeathed his large Dante library, coins, medals, parchments, MSS., &c., to University College, Gower Street, London, and invested a sum of money in the Funds for the purpose of founding a lectureship on the Divine Comedy, twelve lectures to be delivered every year free to the public, without charge and without tickets, each lecturer to fill the chair during three years in order to allow him to get through the three great divisions of the poem.

Having published in 1877 a translation of the Inferno in the metre of the original, the Council of University College applied to me to undertake the first English course. Accordingly the first or introductory lecture was delivered in April, 1878, the subject being the literary history of the Divine Comedy. The second lecture consisted of a sketch of the history of the Italian Republics; and the third comprised a study of the character of Beatrice, the central figure of the Divine Comedy. The remaining nine lectures were devoted to a study of the Inferno. A similar course on the Purgatorio was delivered in the spring of 1879, and the third course on the Paradiso in 1880.

I propose in the following pages to attempt to convey to the general reader some idea of the scope and objects of the Divine Comedy.

In 1317 Dante dedicated the portion of his Paradiso which he had completed to Can Grande della Scala of Verona, imperial Vicar in Lombardy since 1312. He

informs his noble patron that in the beginning of every doctrinal work six things have to be investigated the subject, the agent, the form, the end or object, the title of the book, and its kind of philosophy. In three of these things -the subject, the form, and the title-this cantica of the Paradiso differs from the rest of the poem; in the others it does not. He then proceeds to state that this work has many senses; the literal and the allegorical, which latter is moral or anagogical. These he illustrates, as also the preliminary matters to be considered. The subject of the whole work is "The state of souls after death, considered simply as such"; but, allegorically, the subject “is man, who, in the exercise of his free will, according to his merits or demerits, is subject to the justice of reward or punishment." The end of all or each part is both immediate and remote; but, omitting all subtle researches, it is "to remove those now living from a state of misery, and to lead them to a state of happiness." This short definition, however, gives no idea of the encyclopedic character of the poem, nor of the treasures of learning which it contains It is a résumé of medieval lore, the final expression of the ethics, the metaphysics, and the theology of the schools. It also exhibits the physical science of the period. It contains examples of fervid eloquence. It is a middle-age manual of the symbolical mythology of the classic poets. It presents the political movements of the time in Italy, and in an essentially dramatic form brings us into personal intercourse with the leading men of the period. The poet marked out for his countrymen a policy for the futurenamely, the unification of Italy under one head; the deprivation of the temporal power of the Papacy, and the limitation of the papal power to spiritual things.

As a lover of Nature, Dante regarded her beauties with the eye of an artist and described them with the pen of a poet; never obtruding them, but presenting a finished

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