ESSAYS.

DANTE FOR THE GENERAL.1

A WORD of apology, or at any rate of explanation, seems almost to be required from any one who, without special qualification, writes about Dante at this period of the world's history. The excuse and the motive are in effect one. Within the last few years Dante may be said to have become popular—popular in the widest use of the term-both in England and in America. A new generation of readers, drawn in many cases from fresh social strata, approach a poet (and particularly a poet whose writing is in a sense sacred) in a different attitude from that of the select few to whom the poems have hitherto been a special cult: 1 Blackwood's Magazine, May 1886.

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and it may perhaps be worth while to look at the Divina Commedia' from the standpoint of some of those who may come unaided to the attempt to understand the meaning-the simplest and most elementary meaning-of the world-famous work. The study of the great Italian, for some reason or other, frequently breeds a peculiar intellectual and spiritual exclusiveness. But this is no new feeling.

"If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd
(As touching my discourse I'm told by thee),
This were my grievous pain." 1

So wrote Boccaccio to one who had censured
his public exposition of Dante in 1373-fifty-
two years after the great poet's death-and
the year, too, of our own Chaucer's visit to
Florence. But the
But the genial story-teller need
not have been afraid. No great poet's work
really suffers from contact with the crowd.
There will always be a large number of the
uneducated ready to be touched by the best,
however much they may miss the subtler deli-
cacies of artistic work,—and it is impossible

1 Dante and his Circle (D. G. Rossetti), p. 250.

for the most commonplace audience to harm a great writer; whilst, on the other hand, the greater the writer, the more certainty there is of his sowing seed of incalculable value in the minds of the most commonplace audience. In music, for example, it has often been observed that, in such assemblages as the People's Concerts, the greatest masters always make themselves felt, however much the general taste may have been debased by music-halls. It is said that in the art of acting, no player ever made a complete failure in the part of Hamlet, the play is so entrancing. In the sacred cabinet of the Sistine Madonna, the solemn awe is not confined to the cultured few. It is the possession and the privilege of the many. And is the same thing not true also of pure literature? The experiment will now, at any rate, be tried in rather a crucial case; for the Divine Comedy,' translated-and on the whole admirably well translated—by Longfellow, has been published in Professor Morley's 'Universal Library,' and can be bought for the modest sum of 10d.

It would be interesting (if it were possible) to know the numbers and the class of buyers

of the book. There will undoubtedly be a number of artisans and mechanics among them. What will they think of it? It must be a considerable puzzle, viewed probably with mixed feelings. Professor Morley has given a succinct account of the poet and his writings in five pages of very small print, and then follows the introductory canto of the "Inferno" preluding the other 99 cantos-the mystic number of the great vision-without one single note or explanation of any kind whatever. It would probably have been quite impossible, as a question of expense, to have given the Italian text at the foot of the English version for the nominal price of a shilling; but will it not be necessary to publish another volume, in the original, if the book is to have a wide appreciation or success amongst the poorer of the English upper middle classes and the more advanced of the lower middle classes, for whom the series is mainly intended?

There is a good deal to be said in favour of the absence of notes. Adequate notes are necessarily so frequent, that the continuity of reading is too much interrupted for pleasure.