Readings on the Inferno of Dante Author:William Warren Vernon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I INTRODUCTION. To the great majority of ordinary readers Dante is known only or chiefly as the author of the Inferno. To a large number indeed, only as t... more »he author of selected episodes, and those selected naturally as presenting some of the most vivid descriptions, the most original conceptions, the most highly coloured scenes in the divisions of the Poem which offer most scope for episodes of this particular kind. Obviously the result is a most distorted and one-sided con- ception of the genius and also of the character of the Poet. Hence many shallow criticisms and off- hand condemnations, and that even on the part of such eminent writers and critics as Voltaire, Goethe, and Landor. These when occurring to a casual or superficial reader are excusable, and in some cases almost natural. But when they are pressed upon us by professed teachers or critics, we suspect that our would-be guides have consciously or uncon- sciously been following the method urged upon Balaam by Balak in reference to the Israelites: " Come . . . unto another place, from whence thou . . . shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all, and curse me them from thence." The first and most necessary corrective step is to remove from any such isolated position, and before b pronouncing judgment, to endeavour to see something more than " the utmost part" of the Poet's mind and heart, by study of the other co-ordinate divisions at least of the great Poem, if of no more of his writings. There are, happily, now abundant facilities for such a study provided for students of every degree, and not the least in respect of the Purgatorio by the earlier labours of the indefatigable author of the present work.f It is not too much to say that anyone familiar with the Purgatorio ony, would ...« less