For the English reader the following books and essays will be useful:--Cary's translation of the 'Divine Comedy,' in blank verse, modeled on Milton's verse, and remote from the tone of the original. This is the version of a refined scholar; it has been much admired and is generally quoted in England. It is furnished with good notes.
Longfellow's verse-for-verse unrhymed translation is far the most accurate of the English translations in verse, and is distinguished also for the verbal felicity of its renderings. The comment accompanying it is extensive and of great value, by far the best in English.
Of literal prose translations, there are among others that of the 'Inferno' by Dr. John Carlyle, which is of very great merit; that of the whole poem, with a comment of interest, by Mr. A. J. Butler; and that also of the whole poem and of the 'New Life' by C. E. Norton.
The various works on Dante by the Rev. Dr. Edward Moore, of Oxford, are all of the highest worth, and quite indispensable to the thorough student. Their titles are--'Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divina Commedia,' 'Time References in the Divina Commedia,' 'Dante and his Early Biographers,' and 'Studies in Dante.'
Lowell's essay on 'Dante' (prose works of James Russell Lowell, Riverside edition, Vol. iv.), and 'Dante,' an essay by the Rev. R. W. Church, late Dean of St. Paul's, should be read by every student. They will open the way to further reading. The 'Concordance to the Divine Comedy,' by Dr. E. A. Fay, published by Ginn and Company, Boston, for the Dante Society, is a book which the student should have always at hand.
In making the following translations from Dante's chief works, my attempt has been to choose passages which should each have interest in itself, but which, taken together, should have a natural sequence and should illustrate the development of the ruling ideas and controlling sentiment of Dante's life. But they lose much of their power and beauty in being separated from their context, and the reader should bear in mind that such is the closeness of texture of Dante's work, and so complete its unity, that extracts, however numerous and extended, fail to give an adequate impression of its character as a whole. Moreover, no poems suffer greater loss in translation than Dante's, for in no others is there so intimate a relation between the expression and the feeling, between the rhythmical form and the poetic substance. C. E. N.