CORRIGENDA.

Page 6, 5 lines from bottom, dele comma after Corduba'

76, last line, delenor are the words used in the sense of the original.'

117, 8 lines from bottom. for Phys. III. i.' read Phys. I. iii.' 147 (also pp. 152, 3, 4 and 289, and perhaps elsewhere), for Mazzuchelli'read' Mazzucchelli.'

195, line 7, dele

200, line 4, for

(shield of Aeneas)'.

represented on the shield of Aeneas' and

read 'set forth in prophetic vision by Anchises.'

Bowman' read Bowden.'

267, 5 lines from bottom insert the reference Purg. ix. 17.'

392, line 8 from bottom, insert '8' before 'll. 178 seqq.'

ADDENDA.

The following additional Scripture references may be inserted:

Also p. 284 in line 10, after 'however,' insert in Lucan, Phars. iii.

11. 256-263. and '

STUDIES IN
IN DANTE

I. SCRIPTURE AND CLASSICAL AUTHORS

IN DANTE

I HAVE had occasion before' to notice how Dante's numerous references to Scripture and Classical authors might frequently be employed for purposes of textual criticism, and also for the interpretation of difficult passages. But apart from any such special applications, the subject seems to me to possess a wider and more general interest of its own. For Dante's reading was so extensive, and his mind was, so to speak, so brimful of the varied learning thus acquired, that there is scarcely a page of his writings which does not exhibit its influence, and which consequently is not more fully and adequately appreciated when read in its light. I have now therefore endeavoured to make as complete a collection as I could, not only of direct and acknowledged quotations, which are very numerous (amounting to over six hundred), but also of allusions and forms of expression which either certainly, or with more or less probability, imply a reference to the language of some previous writer. The collection of this latter class of references must of necessity be very imperfect and incomplete. Every student according to the extent and character of his reading could doubtless add to it considerably. But in order to impose some definite limits to a subject otherwise practically inexhaustible, I have observed two main restrictions. (1) The scope of the enquiry has been confined to Scripture and

1 Textual Criticism of the Divina Commedia, Appendix I.

B

Classical authors'.' To have included mediaeval and scholastic writers, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, would probably have about doubled the task, and indeed it would have been an undertaking for which I should feel even more incompetent than I do for the less ambitious one which I have now ventured to attempt. Moreover this work has been in many respects well performed by others, as, for instance, notably by Hettinger for St. Thomas Aquinas ; by Lubin for Hugh of St. Victor; by Marriotto de Gagliole for St. Francis, and also for Aquinas. (2) I have also excluded merely apt illustrations, or parallel passages resulting from coincidences of thought. I have confined myself in the Index here printed to passages which (in my judgement at least, though others may not always agree with it) were likely to have been so far in Dante's mind as consciously, or even unconsciously perhaps sometimes, to modify the form of his language. Such at any rate are the scope and the limits of the enquiry which I have proposed to myself.

One advantage may perhaps be anticipated from the materials or statistics now for the first time collected and tabulated. They will, I hope, enable students to form a more complete idea than was before possible of the encyclopaedic character of Dante's learning and studies, and of the full extent and variety of the literary equipment which enabled him to compose works covering a wider range of subjects than perhaps any other writer, certainly any other very great writer, ever attempted. Our admiration is indefinitely increased when we remember the difficulties under which this surprising amount of learning was amassed; when we reflect that it was in the days before the invention of printing, when books existed only in manuscript, and were consequently very rare and precious, and difficult of access; when there were no helps for study in the way of notes and dictionaries, no conveniences for reference, such as divisions of chapters, sections, paragraphs ;

I have indeed made one or two special and occasional exceptions, as perhaps in including St. Augustine and Orosius under this title. Also some of the references to Albertus Magnus and the Arabian astronomers are too important to be passed over without some notice.

above all, no indexes or concordances to help the fallible memory (though, happily, no doubt less fallible then in proportion to the reliance placed upon it); when, finally, we add to all this the consideration of the circumstances of Dante's own life, a turbulent, wandering, unsettled life, one of which we may truly say 'without were fightings, within were fears;' one intensely preoccupied with fierce political struggles and anxieties, when 'politics' (if we may use so misleading a term) were a question of life and death to those who engaged in them, and defeat meant, as in Dante's own case, exile, confiscation, ruin. The varied and extensive reading of which Dante's works give evidence would be admirable if it had been exhibited under the most favourable conditions of what we call 'learned leisure,' and with the help of modern appliances, but under the circumstances in which Dante accomplished it it is nothing less than amazing. Nor are these considerations materially affected even when all allowance has been made for the occurrence of secondhand references and the occasional use of handbooks of extracts and quotations, or 'Florilegia,' on both of which matters we shall have a few words to say presently.

As Mr. Eliot Norton has truly said, 'Dante was born a student, as he was born a poet, and had he never written a single poem, he would still have been famous as the most profound scholar of his times. Far as he surpassed his contemporaries in poetry, he was no less their superior in the depth and extent of his knowledge.' Dante is a striking example of what Mr. A. J. Butler has well termed 'the incredible diligence' of the Middle Ages. We marvel at this in our life of feverish haste, as we do at the infinite patience and leisure of Indian and Chinese craftsmen. The learning of Petrarch is also very remarkable, but the circumstances of his life were much more favourable for its acquisition than those in which Dante lived.

This subject has already, in a partial way, attracted the attention of several students of Dante. In a partial way, I mean, because, although some writers have dealt with the quotations to be found in single works of Dante, and others