us
dictionaries were practically useless except for courier's work.
How splendid Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators,
Benvenuto da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of them! They won't
let the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without
seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always seem to
_chercher midi a quatorze heures_, and irritate me beyond measure.
There is invention enough in Dante without all their embroidery.
But this grubbing and grouting seems to be infectious among Dante
scholars--they all catch the disease."

He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed
ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship,
the Honourable W.W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted,
and Mr. Vernon's letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:--

"This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew
the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read
him. The difficulty scared me."

Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away
for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without
flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy
whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored
by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took
advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it
was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any
material out of Dante.

An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during
the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian
chapters of his _Memories_, but it was another distraction. It took his
thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he
could prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his
fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for
he wrote (March 17th, 1916):--

"You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my
troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part
in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those
only two--for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days
when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual
panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, n