love
of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below
criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had
no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get
any friend who had, to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or
Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any
of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted; and we
have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken.
I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the
public what I would have had a friend do for myself.

The _Critical and Biographical Notices_ I did not intend to make so long
at first; but the interest grew upon me; and I hope the reader will
regard some of them--Dante's and Tasso's in particular--as being
"stories" themselves, after their kind,--"stories, alas, too true;"
"romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which is
personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has
led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any
time in the endeavour to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold
those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason
of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the
absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the
uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it
to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and
the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable,
would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a
prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was
reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to
be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to
do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength.
Machiavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its
first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis
and St. Dominic,[2] the faith would have been lost. It may have been;
but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and
progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among
all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few
persons