gatory, and Paradise, with its Seven Heavens. It is for the most part a tedious tale, and bears evident marks of having been written by a friar of some monastery, when the afternoon sun was shining into his sleepy eyes. He seems, however, to have looked upon his own work with a not unfavorable opinion; for he concludes the Epistle Introductory with the words of St. John: "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written m this book; and if any man shall take away from these things, God shall take away his part from the good things written in this book."
It is not impossible that Dante may have taken a few hints also from the Tesoretto of his teacher, Ser Brunetto Latini, See Canto XIV. Note 30.
See upon this subject, Cancellieri, Osservazioni Sopra l'Originalità di Dante;—Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory, an Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise, current during the Middle Ages;—Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Siècle;—Labitte, La Divine Comédie avant Dante, published as an Introduction to the translation of Brizeux;—and Delepierre, Le Livre des Visions, ou l'Enfer et le Ciel décrits par ceux qui les ont vus. See also the Illustrations at the end of this volume.
CANTO I.
1. The action of the poem begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, at which time Dante, who was born in 1265, had reached the middle of the Scriptural threescore years and ten. It ends on the first Sunday after Easter, making in all ten days.
2. The dark forest of human life, with its passions, vices, and perplexities of all kinds; politically the state of Florence with its factions Guelf and Ghibelline. Dante, Convito, IV. 25, says: "Thus the adolescent, who enters into the erroneous forest of this life, would not know how to keep the right way if he were not guided by his elders."
Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, II. 75:—
"Pensando a capo chino
Perdei il gran cammino,
E tenni alla traversa
D' una selva diversa."
Spenser, Faerie Queene, IV. ii. 45:—
"Seeking adventures in the salvage wood."
13. Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, which is a kind of Divine Comedy in prose, says: "I beheld then that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty. . . . . But
